


take the parts i remember, and stitch them back together

by notdarthvader



Series: variations on a shepard hymn [5]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Religion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-04-07 07:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14075826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notdarthvader/pseuds/notdarthvader
Summary: “A dead god dreams,” the Cerberus crewman is saying, his voice thin and reedy, and in the log, his hands shake and shake and shake. “A god – a real god – is a verb,” he says, and Garrus can’t help but look at Shepard. “not some old man with magic powers. It’s a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn’t have to want to. It doesn’t have to think about it. It just does.”Shepard glances back at him. “C’mon, we need to catch up with that geth.”Garrus thinks of storms, and of gods, of black chalk paint, and of forces that warp reality just through being.He thinks, maybe, he gets it.





	1. gavriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A character study woven in with a sort of study on religion and Mass Effect. I took what I could find from the games and the wiki and sort of… expanded on that. I feel like there’s not enough of a consistent cultural lore to the religions that different races have, or an explanation on the many different dialects and the way language can tie to religion.
> 
> So, I did some research and wrote this multi-chapter character study. It does have a good happy ending! But theres a lot of reflection and angst first
> 
> Changing a few details of the plot for reasons.

Shepard fights like a force of nature.

She fights like the harsh blast of the dust-drift radiation storms on Palaven, or the summer heat flashes that rise up from the equator on Illium.

The way the air stills when the biotics charge up along her spine, power crackling, electric, around her stirs something beneath Garrus’ skin.

Something like awe, or admiration. Fear, even, if he’s being honest with himself.

“I’m not sure how familiar you are with Earth,” Alenko says once while he, Garrus, and the rest of the crew are watching Shepard spar with Wrex.

The crimson spill of her hair has been jostled loose from its braid, strands plastered to her sweaty face, bloody-wine-red. Her knuckles are raw and busted where they flex before her face as she forces herself back into ready. Wrex only looks marginally better, the wrinkles around his eyes tight with fatigue.

“I haven’t been to Earth before. First Contact War, and all that jazz,” Garrus replies after watching Shepard and Wrex tangle again, Wrex charging hard and fast, Shepard using her speed, her surprising brute strength to her advantage.

“We have a lot of types of natural disasters, back on Earth,” Kaidan says, as Shepard finally manuvers just right, powering up her biotics at the right moment to pitch Wrex over her head and slam him into the ground behind her as he charges. “Hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes. Shepard though…”

Shepard holds her hand out to Wrex and grins at him, a quicksilver tug up the side of her mouth, a flash of teeth that humans insisted was harmless. Friendly.

“Shepard’s a damn thunderstorm,” Alenko says. “She’s…” he trails off, watching the tumble of her hair down her back as she leaves. “You have to go to Earth. Stand out in the field as the storm rolls in. You’ll get it then.”

* * *

 

Garrus searches the Extranet, later that night.

 _Thunderstorm_ , he thinks, watching the sky light up, blue, green, purple in the vids, watching the rain pelt down.

He thinks of the way the biotics light up down Shepard’s spine and thinks _yeah. That makes sense_.

* * *

 

And then the Normandy goes up in flames, Shepard falling into the dark-distant drift of space, and Garrus is lost.

He sits alone, in the empty quiet of his Citadel apartment until his tongue is dry in his mouth, and a tremble runs through the lines of his body. It takes another day for him to force himself to pull open his footlocker, and pull out the chalk.

He paints black chalk over the lines of his colony marks with a shaking hand in the dim lights of his bathroom, staring at his own haunted reflection in the mirror.

Solana calls later that night, and he answers without saying a word.

She opens her mouth.

Snaps it shut, and nods once.

She walks away from the screen, and comes back, three minutes later, black chalk paint held in one hand, a hand mirror in the other.

They sit in silence on the call together, saying nothing as Solana paints lines of black chalk over the tattoos on her face. Within the week, the chalk will have washed away, faded to nothing but a memory, and all Shepard’s close belongings will have been burned. ( _He won’t let them auction them off, the way they do all the other relics of heroes. Shepard wasn’t like their other fake, posturing heroes. Shepard wasn’t **theirs**_.)

Garrus breathes in, and thinks of the way Shepard’s powerful shoulder felt under his hand, the way the air cleared and burned fresh around her, like the cool wash of rain in the evening. In the quiet of the Normandy, she would sit and watch the stars glide past, the soft light gentle on her face. She was the first true friend he ever really had. Hadn’t really understood what that meant until she clapped a hand on his shoulder, murmured some joke about the Mako, and then laughed as he tried to fix her most recent disaster of it.

Solana sets the chalk paint down, the noise echoing harsh in the empty still of his apartment. She breathes out, sets her jaw, staring back at him like a tragedy-worn dare, the black grievances stark, brutal against the pale plates of her face.

Garrus breathes, and watches his sister mourn with him.

* * *

 

C-Sec is stifling, crumbling under the weight of restrictions and the inability to actually _do anything_ , and the Council just talks out their ass, pointless fucking politics and bureaucratic bullshit.

It doesn’t take long for them to start lying, covering up the evidence of the Reapers, writing it off and dismissing it as just a rogue Spectre and Garrus just-

He just-

He just can’t bring himself to care about them.

So he leaves.

He leaves C-Sec, he leaves the Citadel, he just-

Leaves.

* * *

 

He drifts, at first. Slipping from transport shuttle to transport shuttle, his head down, his shoulders slumped.

The black paint flakes off his face is pieces. Like stardust.

Like ash.

He clenches his hands into fists, and breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

* * *

 

He ends up on Eden Prime after a few weeks.

 _Eden Prime_ , of all places.

There’s talk of a memorial being erected there, and there’s talk about what a _hero_ Shepard was, and how she really sacrificed everything for them. Of course, in the same breath, they’re dismissing the Reaper threat, and dismissing how she worked with _aliens_.

Garrus bites down on his tongue, and keeps his focus on the homestead he’s rebuilding, the heavy weight of the hammer in his hands a small comfort, the easy repetition of the movements a quiet escape.

The wind whispers over the open fields, and despite the suffocating heat of the summer sun, he can almost hear the husk of Shepard’s voice in the way the wheat shells rasp against one another.

* * *

 

The storms roll in that evening.

The sticky heat of the humid air hangs heavy, twining through the stifling weight of the air as dark clouds boil a dark ribbon along the horizon.

“Gavriel,” the homesteader calls from behind him and he turns to look back at the couple, sitting on the porch. “Why don’t you join us for a beer to watch the storm come in? We picked up some dextro stuff from the store for you.”

He blinks at them. “You watch them outside?”

The man shrugs a shoulder. “It’s just what we do here. There’s nothing quite like watching the storm roll in.”

Garrus breathes out and thinks of the lightning-flicker warp of the mass effect fields up Shepard’s spine.

“Yeah,” he says at least. “Yeah, okay.”

* * *

 

The clouds roil indigo against the golden roll of the hills of wheat. In the thick swelter of the summer sweat, the beer is cold in his hands, and cooler still against his tongue.

It’s enjoyable enough Garrus thinks, as the distant thunder rumbles, solid, steady as a promise.

He takes another pull of his beer.

“You do this regularly?” Gavriel – Garrus – asks.

“Usually just for the first few storms of the season,” the farmer says, “but this one looks like a force to reckon with. Figured we might as well sit it out.”

He nods at that, and turns his attention back to the swell of the storm, watching as the clouds reach, clawing ever higher into the atmosphere.

He breathes out.

And then, the way the news of the Normandy’s destruction sank into his soul, the first breath of cool air cuts through the suffocating summer heat, the rich petrichor of the earth carrying through the wind like a balm.

“Oh,” he says, as something stirs beneath his skin. Something _alive_ for the first time in weeks. The farmers laugh, but it’s not unkind.

The storm bears down on them, thunder crackling a wild heart-beat tattoo against his eardrums, the rain rushing in, the scent of the damp earth sweet against his nose, against his tongue.

Through the carving flicker of lightning, the steady thrum of thunder, he can almost see the white-hot flit of Shepard’s quicksilver smile knifing through the skies, see the corded might of her biceps, the roll of her shoulders in the tempest of the clouds, smell the heat-struck, salt-fresh sweat of her skin in the linger of the humid air.

“Oh,” Garrus says again, quieter, a soft revelation for himself.

Kaidan was right.

* * *

 

And then he’s on Omega, and his team is dead, their bodies covered in tarp and strapped down. If he survives this, he’ll burn their bodies in one of the quiet allies, where the dusty mining skies give way to the vast expanse of the stars. Their spirits will be free, then, and the spirit of their makeshift little company will live on.

If he survives.

( _He won’t survive_ , he knows this, but that’s not something he can afford to think right now.)

 _I’m sorry_ , he tells his father, and thinks maybe he almost imagines the remorse in his father’s voice.

He breathes out, rises above cover and-

The scope catches the glitter of an N7 logo, crisp on black armor. Their helmet is fully in place, a visor covering their eyes, but he can see the bow-shape of their lips, see the scars that cross their face.

His finger spasms on the trigger, and his shot goes wide.

Ducks back down to cover.

“You know what, dad,” he says then, something too fragile and delicate to be hope lighting in his voice. “I’ll be home when I can. The odds just got a lot better.”

He loads a concussive round. Breathes out.

And aims.

* * *

 

The N7 takes her sweet fucking time, waltzing around, talking to the various merc leaders. She pauses, just as she’s about to jump over the barricade, squinting up at him, before her face smooths over in resolve.

Garrus breathes out.

Raises up and-

The air goes still. Thick, heavy.

Like the incoming tide, like, like-

From the far edge of the bridge, biotics light up the N7’s spine, like the fury-fast flicker of lightning, and _she smiles_. A crooked, quicksilver, one-sided grin.

And launches herself right into the fray.

He breathes in as the crackle of the dark energy washes over him and lines up his next shot.

* * *

 

There’s a flash of heat, a flash of pain, and when he’s gasping back into consciousness, his voice a strangled gurgle, all he can hear is the frantic call of her voice, rough, husky against his ears.

_Garrus?! Stay with me, Garrus. Don’t you dare die on me._

He tries to force his words into the shape of _whatever you need, Shepard_ , but all that comes out is a broken, battered wheeze.

Shepard’s face is lit up, hovering over his own, and her lips are moving, and her eyes are wide, panicked, desperate, but he can’t hear anything, and he can feel the way his breathing is choking into a rattle, and so he stares at her, etches the cut of her cheekbone, the solid line of her jaw, the sea-green of her eyes in his mind. He stares at her, willing himself to _remember_ , until the world goes quiet, dark, and silent.

* * *

 

“Scars suit you,” Shepard says, an upward curl to her lips, her long, crimson hair in a neat plait down her back. He takes in the eerie spiderweb network of scars crossing her face, and grins back.

“Scars suit you, too, Shepard,” he says. She flashes that lightning-flicker smile back at him, bright, quick.

His jaw aches, and his ear is still ringing in a way he worries might just be on the side of permanent, but _Shepard is there_ , alive, and smiling.

And well.

That’s that.

* * *

 

Garrus isn’t around when she wakes up Grunt.

But, he can piece together what happened pretty easily. After all, Wrex followed her around with the same star-struck gleam in his eye, albeit less obviously, for a week the first time she flipped him.

Given that Grunt is reverently calling her _Battlemaster_ , trailing after her like a lost small creature, and given the krogan-shaped dent in the steel of the port-side cargo-

Well.

If he wasn’t sure about Shepard being _Shepard_ before, there was no doubt left anymore.

* * *

 

There are hoards of husks and scions infesting the derelict Reaper, but Shepard pauses to look through all the video logs of the Cerberus crew, a distant look in her eyes he can’t quite place.

“ _A dead god dreams_ ,” the Cerberus crewman is saying, his voice thin and reedy, and in the log, his hands shake and shake and shake. “ _A god – a real god – is a verb_ ,” he says, and Garrus can’t help but look at Shepard. “ _not some old man with magic powers. It’s a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn’t have to want to. It doesn’t have to think about it. It just does._ ”

As the waves of husks wash over them, Shepard is a constant, the blue-white lightning hiss of her biotics warping, twisting the air around her like a promise. The air freezes in Garrus’ lungs as Shepard launches through the air, charging headfirst at a scion.

Miranda shares a quick, panicked look with him, and the look back just in time to watch the scion disintegrate in a shower of ash and flames.

Shepard glances back at them. “C’mon, we gotta catch up with that geth.”

Garrus thinks of storms, and of gods, of black chalk paint, and of forces that warp reality just through being.

He thinks, maybe, he gets it.

* * *

 

 _Garrus_ , she says, her voice the roughened rumble of thunder in the summer distance.

He breathes out his confession, his loss, his pain in the still space between them, a tremble in the breaking undertones of his voice. _You’re all I have left_ , he murmurs, his voice thick in his throat.

 _Garrus_ , she says again, gentler, a melancholy lilt to her words as she cradles his jaw in her hand. Her skin is still warm, soft from her shower, her long hair damp in its neat braid down her back.

She presses her forehead to his, and he can feel the taut, powerful line of her muscles rippling beneath her clothes, taste the way lightning and ozone and dark energy crackle through her veins.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, remembering the way the first breeze of the storm felt against the hardened leather of his skin, the way the air felt alive, buzzing through his veins.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, as she kisses him with all the confident strength of thunder across golden plains. He tastes the rain of her mouth sweet against his tongue, watching the dangerous roil of clouds in the muscles of her broad shoulders.

Like wheat bowing before the might of the storm, he is lost.

* * *

 

When he first hears her voice again, cutting crisp through the war torn surface of Menae, he thinks he’s hallucinating, or dying, or maybe he actually did end up dead in that last push by the Reapers after all.

But when he looks, she’s arguing with General Corinthus, that same one-sided tug to her mouth that betrays her frustration.

“I need someone, I don’t care who, as long as they can get us the turian resources we need,” she says, a snap of command in her voice that could make even turians straighten.

He squares his shoulders, rolls his neck, and fights to keep the grin from his voice as he walks over. “I’m on it, Shepard.”

When she smiles, slow and sweet as a misty morning sunrise and tugged just a little more to one side, it’s worth it.

* * *

 

 They cling to each other in the tiny, fleeting moments they have to breathe, her eyes heavy with something like sadness, or anger, or joy. He can never quite place it.

But she still tastes like summer rain, still smiles like quicksilver or lightning.

He wonders if the spirit of a storm guides her.

* * *

 

 _God is a verb_ , he thinks, sometimes in the quiet spaces between firefights, when Shepard glances up at him. Her armor is mud splattered and blood streaked, rivulets of grime tracking down the exposed pale of her face.

She barks an order to the team, issuing sharp commands, and then-

She squares her shoulders.

The biotics charge up her spine, and she turns, a wordless cry tearing from her lips as she throws herself into the heart of the oncoming husk hoard.

_It’s a force. It’s a storm pulled into human flesh._

* * *

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snarls at her.  Or, at least he hopes he does. He hopes she doesn’t hear the anguished keening that clings to the undertones of his voice, or catch the way his words crumble, crack at the edges.

Shepard touches his scarred jaw with one hand, devastatingly gentle, and he can smell the crackle of ozone in the air around her, see the wash of rain in her eyes. “I love you,” she whispers. Her hand flexes along his jaw, and then she is pulling away, charging back into the haze of battle, back towards the beacon.

“I love you, too,” he whispers at her retreating back.

If she is a storm, he is the rubble left in her wake.

* * *

 

The Crucible goes up in a blaze of red-orange light, and Joker is speeding away from the chaos, teeth grit, his eyes shuttered.

Garrus watches the light come ever closer, and when the systems fail, he closes his eyes, and just tries to breathe.


	2. akrasiel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> faith is sometimes the only lifeline you have, when you're stranded on a desolate planet, with a broken ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aite seems a lot like the planet they crash landed on, so I just,,, rolled with it.
> 
> Song I wrote this chapter to was ‘Save Yourself’ by Kaleo. It’s a fantastic song, and horribly sad. I recommend everyone check it out.
> 
> For those who haven’t read my other story, my Shepard has the first three lines of “Do not go gentle into that good night” tattooed down her spine. It’s her personal mantra, and a lot of her crew have picked up on it. Garrus has personally traced her tattoo with his tongue, so he knows the first three lines by heart, and learned the rest of it from listening to her whisper it to herself, and speak it to them so often.
> 
> Do not go gentle into that good night,  
> Old age should burn and rave close of day  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

They realize where they’ve crashed a few days after the fact, when they come across the ruined remains of an all too familiar Cerberus base.

“Aite,” Tali breathes out. “We’re on Aite.”

Litae looms dangerously in the sky overhead.

“Well,” Garrus says at last. “At least we know we’re running on a tight schedule.”

“That _thing_ could crash into the planet anytime from one month to two hundred years from now,” Tali snaps.

Garrus offers her a weak grin. “We don’t have much time to lose, then.”

Tali sighs, and her shoulders slump, and against the vast green vegetation, she looks small, small, small.

“I wish Shepard were here,” she says, something that’s not quite misery, too heavy for sorrow in her voice.

Garrus breathes out. “She made it. She’s come back from worse.”

Tali gives a watery laugh. “True. She got spaced, and all it did was make her angrier. She stormed through a Collector base, and walked away with only a scratch across the face.”

“It was a little more than a scratch.”

Tali snorts. “Considering she launched herself head on at a baby Reaper, I would consider it _just a scratch_.”

Garrus huffs a breath that almost passes for a laugh. “Shepard doesn’t know what fear is.”

“You’re right,” Tali says, gathering up what wreckage from the Cerberus base she can carry, handing some salvage off to Garrus as well. “Shepard was made from love and anger.” Tali goes quiet for a long moment, hovering over a circuit board. “Shepard would not let something like… like whatever happened back there kill her.”

EDI’s body slumps silent and still back in the Normandy’s cargo hold, and it’s hard to look Joker in the eyes most days.

For however large and lush it is, Aite still is too quiet.

In the silence, all they can hear is grief.

* * *

 

“The goddess is watching over her,” Liara tells him a few weeks later. Tali’s repairs are coming along well, and Garrus and Liara are working on repairing the Normandy’s outer panels.

He glances up.

Liara breathes in, and out. “The goddess. Athame. She is the goddess of the Asari, and the first biotic. She will watch after Shepard, and keep her safe.”

Garrus nods, and focuses on the repairs.

Then, “The first biotic?” he can’t help but ask.

“Yes,” Liara says, looking up from her work. “Would you like to hear her story?”

* * *

 

Athame was not a goddess in the beginning.

In the beginning, she was an Asari, like the rest of them. Only, then, they were not called Asari. They were a nameless people at war with each other on Thessia. The world was young, and all they knew was the anger that turned their blood to stardust, and the need to fight for change that seeped in their bones.

( _“Blood to stardust?” Garrus asks, and Tali shushes him as she joins them._

 _“Don’t interrupt! It’s not often you get to hear about the asari goddess!”_ )

Athame, then named Anant, left her home when she was only forty to join the war. Wars back then were ugly, brutal. This was before the Asari had biotic powers, for Athame had not yet star-blessed them, and they were not yet Asari.

Anant was a powerful fighter, and she quickly gained the respect of her fellow warriors in the fight. Anant fought her way up the chain of command, for hundreds of years.

( _“Spirits,_ ” _Garrus breathes. “Somehow I forget how long you all live. Hundreds of years for a war?”_

_“This was before Athame,” Liara says, shrugging a shoulder. “All we knew back then was war.”_

_“ **Spirits** ,” he says again, and even Tali looks dizzy where she sits beside him, all pretense of fixing the ship dropped._)

When Anant reached the age of three hundred, she had honed her skills to a razor’s edge, and there were few who could dare meet her on the field of battle. However few they were, there were still others who were stronger than she.

It was one of these warriors, Astre, who defeated Anant in a fateful battle at the heart of Thessia. The battle was long, bloody, lasting for hours into the night. Anant, tired from the fight, overextended, allowing Astre to strike what would have been a fatal flow. Bleeding badly, her red blood staining the dirt-

( _“Red blood?” Kaidan asks, dropping off more salvage for Tali to look at. “The Asari have purple blood.”_

_“It was red before Athame blessed us with stardust and biotics. That’s what changed our blood purple. The more blue your skin is, the more respected as a true biotic you are, since you are more blessed by the goddess than those who are more purple or red.”_

_“Oh,” Tali says, her voice bewildered with realization._ )

Bleeding badly, her red blood staining the dirt, Anant stumbled back, and fell from the edge of the cliff, where the waves bore her battered body under, carrying her deep to the heart of the planet. It was there she slept, surrounded by element zero for years.

Above the ground, the wars raged on, the tides ever turning.

After one hundred years had passed, Anant awoke from her deep sleep, the power of element zero burning under her skin.

The first biotic.

However, she was no longer Anant, not truly, as all the youthful vigor of Anant had perished with her death. So, she took the name Mesenet, for Mesenet means _she who is new, borne from the tides_.

( _“So Mesenet was what, four hundred? That makes her a Matron at that age, right?”_ _Kaidan asks._

_“Exactly so,” Liara says. “Athame allowed us to understand the phases of our life, from Maiden, to Matron, to Matriarch.”_

_Vega nods slowly, having given up the pretense of cleaning the salvage, and just listening to the story._ )

When Mesenet returned, Astre could not believe her arrival, and was awe-struck and terrified of the new biotic power that Mesenet carried with her. Mesenet forgave her, for the years of her blood-thirsty youth were past, and all she yearned for was peace, and a family to share that peace with. Astre promised her blade and body to Mesenet’s cause, and together they united their armies, and quelled the tempestuous rage of the Asari, who were still not yet Asari.

Through the fighting, Mesenet and Astre fell in love and became bonded, and embraced eternity together-

( _Vega snickers, and even Joker can’t help the way his lips curl._

_“This- this is a story you tell your children? You- you phrase it like that?” Tali stammers._

_Liara blinks at her. “Of course we do. There is nothing wrong with our sexuality or the way we bond with others. We have long lives, and a long time to process such things.”_

_Tali makes some embarrassed, inarticulate, flustered noise and Garrus laughs at her, a weak thing, but a laugh all the same. Vega and Alenko join in a moment later, and for a brief moment, things are okay._ )

Through the fighting, Mesenet and Astre fell in love and became bonded, and embraced eternity together. From their union of love, they bore three children. Their children were Tanen, the exhaulted one, Buto, the jade-colored one, and Ahemait, the great of death.

Tanen and Buto were strong, and grew up kind and wise, nurtured by their mothers. But Ahemait grew with blood lust in her skin. Like her mother, Ahemait left her home when she was only forty, and left to see the world and bond with others in her youth.

But, her bonding left a trail of broken, depleted bodies in her wake. The more she killed, the stronger she became, her mind and body equal parts a ruthless weapon. Astre and Mesenet begged her, grieved over her cruelty and asked her to cease her violence.

But Ahemait refused, glutted by the power and rush that the bondings gave her. As night fell, Ahemait’s death count rose-

( _“So I guess you could call it her literal body count then, huh,” James says. Joker stares at him for a long moment, before a laugh tumbles out of him, slow and shuddering. Kaidan starts snickering along as he does so, and the three humans end up laughing raucously at a joke the rest don’t understand._

_“Body count?” Tali asks._

_Kaidan calms his wheezing laughter long enough to manage out; “It’s a- A human thing. Kind of awful. It’s a count of how many folks a person has fucked. It’s also a human count of how many folks a person has killed.”_

_Garrus stares at them. “Death and the little death aren’t so different in human culture, then.”_

_“Not so different in Asari culture, either, it seems,” Tali grumbles._ )

As night fell, Ahemait’s death count rose, and soon a great cry rose up from all of Thessia, for daughters were dying in droves. Ahemait’s appetite could not be sated.

Ardat-yakshi, they named her, for she was the demon who came on the night winds. The great in death.

( _“Definitely sounds like she was great at death. And killing,” Joker says, sending the humans back into their snickering._

_“She was murdering my people in droves,” Liara says, shooting them a glare._

_“Yeah, but- but being fucked to death? You gotta admit, that’s hilarious,” Kaidan cuts in. There’s an ease to him that Garrus doesn’t think he’s ever seen, all the stiff military tension bleeding from his frame._

_Liara notices it too and huffs, but her lips curl up a bit. “Alright, I suppose you have a fair point.”_ )

Mesenet realized that her daughter was beyond control, beyond rationality, and could not be reasoned with. So, with Astre’s aid, they drew Ahemait to the heart of Thessia, the cliffs where Anant had died, and together, Mesenet and Astre struck down Ahemait.

Mesenet’s heart had been softened in her hundred years of slumber, and the centuries of peace that had since passed, and she grieved the bravest and smartest of her daughters with a bitterness that broke Astre’s heart. Unable to handle the grief, Mesenet again threw herself back into the waves that had saved her once. This time, she hoped for them to end her life, as she could not face herself any longer.

( _Garrus thinks of Samara, of the wild grief in her eyes as she spoke of her daughters, the pained resignation as she returned from a private mission with Shepard. The way her eyes closed when someone mentioned family._

 _The story of the goddess seemed too familiar._ )

The waves bore Mesenet under once more, and she slept for years, and did not wake again until she reached the age of eight hundred years.

When she woke, the troubles, the sorrow that had plagued her had eased, and her biotic powers had become truly realized, perfected.

When she rose from the earth, she was welcomed back to joy and celebration, for her people had finally resolved their city states into cohesive government, established trade-systems and affirmed peace across Thessia. War was but a distant thought in their minds, though many remembered it vividly still. Tanen and Buto had both struggled and strived to realize a world of peace, as Mesenet had willed, and had been successful.

When Tanen gazed upon her mother in the crowd, she was overcome with joy, and held her long lost mother close as she wept. Tanen attempted to call her mother by name, but her mother stopped her. Just as Anant before, Mesenet had perished in the waves with her daughter, the ardat-yakshi. Her name was to be Asar, for from the silence of contemplation, she had reborn herself, having faced the death of her most beloved.

And so she, her two daughters, and her ever faithful bondmate Astre, and her people, who were still not yet the Asari, celebrated her return. As years passed, she established herself as a voice of reason and wisdom, for she had years of experience having weathered the hardships of life.

And so, the years passed. Tanen and Buto bore children, who bore children themselves, and so on and so forth. They were a people rich in bonds, and strong in a sense of self, and gentled with peace.

( _“But all Asari are biotics. Only Asar is a biotic in your story,” Kaidan says._

_Liara shoots him a look. “I’m getting there, if you are patient.”_

_“Bosh’tet,” Tali hisses at him. “Be quiet or she won’t finish. Asari never share the story of their goddess.”_ )

In the twilight of Asar’s years, the afterlife grew angry with the lack of death, the loss of the souls that had fueled it, and sent a star from the heavens to smite Asar and her people, to purge them from Thessia, and send the world into a war unlike any other.

While her people cried out in terror, Asar walked calmly into the streets, into the open fields to face the star. Astre had passed in peace many years before, and Tanen and Buto now tended their own families, having reached the wisdom touched years of their lives as well. Asar bade her children and her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren farewell, and made them promise that any future their people were to have would be a future of peace and prosperity.

She then ignited the biotics she had been twice-blessed with, and launched herself to the sky to stop the star.

The star exploded in a dazzling array of color and lights, its dust raining down on her people, granting all the people the gift of biotics. Asar had sacrificed herself to save them all, and now they were all star-touched. They named themselves _Asari_ , in honor of her sacrifice, for now they all carried the mark of her victory and her trials. They were now a people born from the silence of contemplation, reborn after having faced the death of their most beloved.

They renamed her Athame, for she was whole in the galaxy, all the warring parts of her twice-reborn soul laid to rest in each other. They renamed her Athame, for Athame means _she who has sacrificed the most, has become whole_.

To this day, Athame watches over us. We can feel her blessing in the marks of stardust that freckle out skin, the bond decorations that have been passed down from our mothers, and in the assured power of our biotics, the way they promise we will be strong and safe, in war and in peace.

* * *

 

“She watches over Shepard, I know it,” Liara says, her voice soft in the quiet that follows her story. “Shepard was… she would have seen Shepard’s struggle and known it. She guides her.”

Tali hands are folded together in her lap, and her shoulders shudder. Kaidan’s jaw is set, his face stoic, his eyes agonized. James’ eyes are closed, delicate, almost, tears sliding down the solid panes of his face.

Garrus closes his eyes, thinks about black chalk paint and the way his voice shakes when he prays to the Spirits, and tries to just breathe.

* * *

 

The days tick by, slow, thick like the still of hot summer air.

There’s a somber silence that’s followed them, carried through the air that not even Vega and his jokes can disrupt. He stops trying after a while, going quiet like the rest of them.

“Hey, Scars,” Vega says once, as they work on piecing the Normandy’s engine back together, under Tali’s watchful eye.

Garrus hums in acknowledgement, tilting his head in his direction.

“I… I don’t speak about it much,” Vega says, and there’s a careful, considering tone to his voice that makes Garrus pause. “My family… back on Earth. I came from a kind of rough place. Don’t like to talk about it much. But my mother… well. Deeply religious, prayed every morning, every night, had about four saints she prayed to regularly, and taught me all about the saints and the angels. You…” Vega trails off, and then says nothing.

Garrus doesn’t dare break the silence.

Then, after two hours have passed;

“You remind me of one of them. The Archangels, that is.”

Garrus goes very, very still.

“His name is Akrasiel. In Hebrew, his name means _friend of God_.” James’ voice is hushed, hanging in the still of the humid air. “He was the archangel of justice. Fairness. Vengeance. And redemption.”

Garrus’ hands shake where he’s trying to wire the circuitry of the board back together.

Vega doesn’t say anything else that day, or the next, but Garrus clasps him on the shoulder, and they share a long, long look.

James Vega, regardless of what anyone else may think or say, was a good man in Garrus’ opinion.

A good man who understood the heart of people, without them ever saying a thing.

* * *

 

 _Akrasiel_ , Garrus thinks, as he lays on his cot months later.

The Normandy is nearly finished with her repairs, and soon, they will be leaving.

 _Archangel,_ he thinks.

He thinks of Shepard’s quicksilver smile, and the way stars look when they explode overhead. He thinks of goddesses, and angels, and the way a blessing looks when its worn as freckles on Shepard’s pale skin.

He closes his eyes, and whispers a prayer to the Spirits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s endlessly fascinating to me how asari culture is modeled after the maiden/mother/crone model of the triple goddess. I imagined that the story of their goddess would be similar to this, and would also contain key elements that asari know about, plus have representation of actual historical events that happened to them.
> 
> Additionally, the story will pick up and be more action oriented in the next chapter or two, so if this kind of quiet thing isn't your cup of tea, just hold on!


	3. i'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire, and getting stabbed to death (a sorrow interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grief is always an ugly thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to A King’s Sunset, off the Black Panther soundtrack, and My Name is Max, off the Fury Road soundtrack while writing this.  
> If you’re the type that likes music while reading, I recommend you listen to those two, in that order.

It’s three weeks of limping through the galaxy, drifting past the destroyed, sparking remains of the Mass Relays, until-

“Holy shit,” Joker breathes out, and from where he’s staring out the window, Garrus looks over.

Tali sucks in a sharp breath. “Is that-“

“They got a Mass Relay up and running. You guys, there’s a Mass Relay that’s running!”

“Hold on, we don’t know if the Normandy can even withstand the pressure of a Mass Relay jump right now,” Garrus cuts in, his subvocals rumbling a warning. “Let alone, where that jump is going to take us to.”

Joker glares back at him. “Well, it’s not like we have the fuel to get much farther, Garrus! The Mass Relay’s just about the only option we have.”

“That’s not… entirely true,” Tali says. “Since the other Mass Relays we’ve seen have been broken, we thought the blast destroyed them all. But this one has been rebuilt, meaning that people have been here. We have the fuel to search this system, and still have enough left over to use the Mass Relay. It would also give us more time to make sure that she can withstand the Mass Relay.”

Garrus sucks in a breath, and it whistles through his teeth.

Joker scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, alright Tali.”

“We’re barely holding together as it is. Give me another three days, and we should be able to withstand the worst of it.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’ll steer her around and see if we can’t find life somewhere.”

“I’ll see if I can’t get the weapons array in a condition where we can use it, should the worst come to happen,” Garrus says after a pause and Joker waves him off.

“Whatever, Garrus. Just, do your thing.”

Tali touches his shoulder lightly, and they turn, and leave.

* * *

 

EDI’s body still shows no signs of life where it lays in the Medbay.

Chakwas watches her unmoving body with something that is almost sorrow.

* * *

 

They’re two days into their wandering, and Garrus is in the engine room, helping Tali with repair when Joker’s voice cuts across the com system. “Hey everyone, we’re picking up a radio signal. I’m not sure if they’re trying to hail us or not, so if someone wants to get up here and help me clear the signal-“

Garrus and Tali are running to the elevator before Joker can finish his sentence.

* * *

 

“ _Come in….mandy, come… this is…. ckett, hailing you from…ifth fleet. Come in, Norman… I repeat, this is Admiral Steven Hackett, hailing you from the Fifth Fleet. Come in, Normandy._ ”

* * *

 

“Shepard,” Garrus says.

It’s not a question.

Admiral Hackett breathes in. His hands are clasped firmly behind his back, tight in parade rest. “Vakarian,” he says. “I’m pleased to see you still live, along with the rest of the crew. T’Soni, nice to see you. Tali’Zorah, I’m glad that one of the galaxy’s finest engineers is still with us.”

“We want the location of Commander Shepard,” Kaidan snaps, all military and cold fury.

Location.

Not status.

Hackett breathes out, and his shoulders slump, just so.

Garrus’ heart stops, caught in his throat.

“Crew of the Normandy,” Hackett begins again, and his voice is softer, wearied, and Garrus can’t-

He can’t, he gave her an order-

“I am…” Hackett sighs, and finally meets their eyes, the strain of the war, the years, evident in the valleys carving through his face. “I am so sorry. Commander Shepard gave her life to stop the Reaper threat. We all owe her… we owe her so much, for her sacrifice. I know that- I know that is no consolation to you. I- I am so sorry for your loss.”

Garrus can hardly hear what Hackett is saying, as his words fade into the rush of blood in his ears, the uneven rasp of his breathing.

He closes his eyes.

Besides him, Tali makes a choked off noise as Liara sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth.

“No,” Joker says. “No, you’re wrong. The Commander wouldn’t just- she wouldn’t just leave us. She wouldn’t abandon us. We’re her _crew_. We’re _her_ crew. She wouldn’t just- she wouldn’t just leave us. You’re wrong. She’s alive. She’s out there, somewhere. You just- you aren’t looking hard enough you-“

“We found her helmet,” Hackett says. “We found her helmet, and we found a lot of blood and burnt body parts. Her helmet was split into two pieces. I am sorry, Jeff.”

Joker goes still, too many emotions to count playing across his face. He makes a quiet, choked off wheeze, before he sinks to his knees, hiding his face in his hands. James drops down beside him to comfort him, Chakaws right along with him.

Hackett breathes in, and it’s shaken, rattling. He opens his eyes, and bleary as they are, he makes eye contact with those who remain standing. “We… we received a series of transmissions from the Commander before the Crucible was destroyed. After opening the first one, it was clear it was a series of transmissions meant for each of you. We will forward these messages to you. You deserve to… She deserves- Well.” Hackett clears his throat. “We’ll get the messages to you all.”

* * *

 

Garrus sits, alone, in the quiet, cavernous silence of his room.

On his omni-tool, Shepard’s last message remains unopened.

In his bag, there is a container of black chalk paint.

* * *

 

Tali and Liara join him after minutes, hours, days of silence have passed.

The black chalk paint sits untouched in his bag.

Neither of them attempt to speak.

Garrus breathes out something like a sob, and stands, walking on stilted, stiff legs to the bag, drawing out the paint.

Liara rises, and takes it, and the paintbrush, from his hands, her eyes sad, tear stained, and aching. Garrus nods once.

When he sits back on the floor, Liara opens the paint, and without a word, traces the colony marks on his face, letting him grieve, finally, and truly.

* * *

 

Garrus sits, with his two closest friends, in the dark. And together, in the silence of the room, before the still audience of the stars, they remember their Commander in the rhythmic sweep of black chalk paint.

* * *

 

The Pacific Northwest is still, hushed, the rolling forests left untouched by the bitter ravages of the war. The heavy mist blankets the trees, muting the crunch of branches and leaves underfoot.

The world is somber. Quiet.

Garrus wonders if Shepard’s death didn’t pull the joy, pull the life from the very heart of the universe itself. _God is a verb_ , he thinks, as he, Tali, and Liara dig a small pit in the earth to place Shepard’s belongings. _A force. It warps reality just by being_.

In the distance, thunder rumbles, and the cool air goes cold.

He strikes a match, tossing it onto the kindling, onto Shepard’s old belongings. Tali sucks in a ragged breath as the last traces of Shepard’s memory go up in flames.

They stand in silence as the storm rolls in, rain husking through the trees, trailing down the harsh panes of Garrus’ face, dripping slow from his chin. The thunder mourns overhead, the grey skies stilted with sorrow. Still, the black chalk paint remains clean, clear, even as the fire sputters under the rhythmic patter of the rain.

The fire coughs, dies, and all that is left is rain soaked charcoal, dampened ash.

“I gave her an order,” he manages at last, his voice rusted and flaking, his tongue finally loosened after the rite. “I should have known she’s always been terrible about- I should have known.”

Liara sets a gentle hand on one shoulder, Tali sets a hand on the other.

Garrus breathes in, the wet earth rich, sorrowful.

And he breathes.

And breathes.

And breathes.

* * *

 

“ _Garrus,_ ” Shepard says, her face battered, blood trailing in a thin line from her nose. She looks exhausted, weary in a way he never knew she could be. Her hair is loose from its tight plait, and her bottom lip is split open.

Still, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, faint and holographic as she is in the message.

“ _Garrus,_ ” she says, her voice rasping warm, tired, through the speakers. “ _I… I don’t think I’ll be able to follow your order this time,_ ” she says, and her smile pulls one side of her face. Weak. Exhausted.

There is a sorrow in her eyes, one deep, aching, like the waves of the ocean on Earth. A bone-deep anguish that he knows intimately.

He’s seen it in the mirror.

“ _Garrus, you have to know-_ “ she says, her voice breaking. “ _Garrus, you have to know, I’ll always be with you. No matter what. No matter where you go, I’ll be with you. I promise. Garrus, I- I love you. I love you, so fucking much. I wish- I wish I could-_ “ She sighs out then, ragged, and the awkward, stumbling gait stops as she stands still for a moment.

There are tears in her eyes, and his heart twists, agonized, in his chest.

She breathes out.

Starts walking again.

“ _I’ll be waiting, okay? At that bar. But don’t- don’t rush it, okay? Live, Garrus. I’ll- I’ll always be with you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I l.. you. … ove you. I ..ve…”_ Shepard’s image cuts out, but if he listens carefully, he can make out the way she whispers _IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou_ like a mantra. A promise.

Then, there are gunshots, a noise like thunder, and then nothing.

* * *

 

Garrus _breaks_.

* * *

 

His subvocals shatter under the weight of his grief, his voice cracking in a wordless cry, echoing hollow off the metal walls of his room.

 _I love you_ , Shepard’s voice whispers, as she fires gunshot after gunshot. _I love you_ , Shepard’s rain-drift, wind-husked voice whispers, over and over again, through the deafening crack of an explosion.

 _I love you,_ Shepard whispers, right up until she dies.

Shepard was all the fierce fury of a storm, wild, free, warping reality wherever she went.

And Garrus?

Garrus is the empty, desolate aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to make this chapter part of something larger, but i felt that would understate it. i decided to let garrus grieving just be its own interlude in the rest of the story.
> 
> its a short chapter, but i'm working on getting the next one up and going since i've already started on that, so please enjoy this one in the meantime!
> 
> like im sure we all do, i have a lot of disagreements about sheps last moments in me3. there was time to call people, she should have been able to say goodbye or send out some message! idk. frustrated


	4. mikhael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just because you tell yourself you've let go, doesn't mean you really actually ever have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listened to "an end once an for all" off the mass effect 3 soundtrack for this one.
> 
> don't worry, the worst of the angst will be over soon.
> 
> maybe

Garrus drifts.

Lost.

There’s some fancy, formal funeral that’s held for Shepard, the cracked remains of her helmet carved into marble and preserved as a monument for her sacrifices. The crew is there, silent, as the rain pours down on them, watching an empty casket lowered into the wet mud.

By that time, Garrus is halfway across the galaxy, aimlessly borne from planet to planet.

* * *

 

Garrus helps people rebuild, blindly throwing himself into the heavy lifting.

He takes care of gangs in some areas, and kills a few corrupted businessmen trying to profit off the damage from the war.

He drifts, and drifts, and drifts.

He never gives his name. The locals usually come up with something that fits him well enough though. They ask, he promises he’s a nobody, they give him a name within the week. The scars mar his colony markings, even as the black chalk paint flakes off his face. Unremarkable. A homeless drifter left stranded in the wake of the war, like so many others.

The months pass, and he drifts.

He drifts, and fixes things. Engines, machines, houses, farms.

He kills some things, too. Gangs, mercenaries, rich frauds.

At night, he dreams of chasing the husking whisper of Shepard’s voice through endless dark corridors, the echo of _I love you I love you I love you_ sighing at him from the walls.

* * *

 

“Mikhael,” a human says to him.

He’s midway through rebuilding the barn at the edge of their tiny settlement, having bunked in the shelter of a garage all week.

In the fields, cows roam, mist settling over the rolling hills.

“Mikhael,” she repeats, her voice a dusty, wooden creak. “The times are changing. The afterlife is in a rage.”

He watches her carefully, not saying a word.

She turns to leave, and pauses, leaning heavily on her cane. “Mikhael,” she says, all the warm humor of an inside joke in her words. “Mikhael, god is a _verb_.”

She’s gone before he can open his mouth to ask.

* * *

 

Hours slide into days, days blur into months.

Time slips on, falling through his fingers like grains of sand from that beach they never got the chance to visit.

* * *

 

Liara and Tali message him regularly but he can’t find it in himself to reply, grief too heavy on his mind; weighting down his hands, his heart.

Time passes, and all he can do is read their messages and watch the stars pass from the windows of the shuttle, silent and sorrowful.

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_I hope this message finds you well, it has been a while since we spoke. We are planning a reunion here in a few months. It will be on the two year anniversary of the end of the war. We’d all like to see you._

_Tell me if you will make it,_

_Liara._

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_Liara won’t admit it, but she is worried about you, and so am I. Just like last time, you’ve vanished on us again. I really wish you would stop doing that. We’re your friends, and we care about you. If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask._

_Tali._

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_The reunion party was fun. We missed you there. Alenko and Wrex didn’t make it either, so without the three of you fighting, it was not as fun as it could have been. We all ended up getting too drunk in the end._

_We miss you. Sometimes it feels like we lost you and the commander._

_Liara._

* * *

 

_Stupid fuckhead older brother,_

_Answer my messages, damn you. I know you’re alive! I’m your goddamn sister, Garrus! I know you’re upset, but running around and playing vigilante **again** isn’t going to accomplish anything._

_Come home._

_Father won’t admit it, but he misses you a lot._

_He’s getting old, Garrus._

_We miss you. Please._

_Solana._

* * *

 

_Scars,_

_I’m not going to ask you to come back. Figure the others have pestered you enough about that. Just stay safe. You need an extra gun at your back, you know how to get ahold of me._

_Vega._

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_Please. Dad and I are really worried about you. It’s been years, Garrus! Almost three years! And we haven’t heard a thing from you, and dad says last time it was like this you called right before you thought you were about to die, and I can’t-_

_We already lost mom, and we lost so many friends in the war, and we almost lost home and you lost-_

_Well._

_I don’t want to lose you too. Please._

_Please come home, big brother._

_Dad and sis._

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_I’ve been receiving strange reports. Religious authorities across several religions are reporting that strange things are happening. I would like to speak with you about this._

_Please contact me as soon as you can,_

_Liara._

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_Please. I’m really worried about you. **We all** are really worried about yu._

_Just. Please. Just let us know you’re alive._

_Please._

_Tali._

* * *

 

_Turian asshole,_

_You realize the rest of us lost a commander, too? You’re not special in being sad about it. Just because she fucked you a few times doesn’t make you special. We all miss her. Get your head out of your ass and talk to your damn friends._

_Wrex_

* * *

 

_Wrex,_

_Fuck you._

_Garrus_

* * *

 

_Garrus,_

_So you’ll answer Wrex when he bullies you? Well, guess you’re getting a piece of my mind then-_

* * *

 

Two hours, and a very thorough angry message later, Garrus calls Tali.

She stares back at him through the holo, her arms folded across her chest.

“ _Bosh’tet turian_ ,” she hisses.

He shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t have an excuse. I’m sorry, Tali.”

Tali sniffs. “I’m not asking you to be my penpal, Garrus. I just want to know you’re alive and safe, that’s all. You’re… you’re my closest and oldest friend.”

“I…” he looks away, down at his hands. “I’m sorry. I’ll get back to you more often. You’re… you’re a good friend of mine, too. I am sorry.”

Tali breathes out, a warbling, staggered noise. “Yeah, well. Don’t forget it. You need anything?”

“A nap, maybe,” he says, and she laughs, awkward, and strained.

“Well, go get some sleep. And message everyone back. We’ve all been worried. Your sister even tracked down and reached out to Wrex. _Wrex_.”

Garrus groans and hides his face in his hands. “Spirits, do I even want to know what he told her?”

“He only said the truth.”

Garrus glances up.

“He said you were too busy having a pity party to get help from anyone and were probably drinking away your sorrow or getting in a fight with someone so you wouldn’t have to think about it, since you’re terrible with your feelings and you’d probably either get back into contact with us in the next year or so, or end up dead.”

“Fucking krogan.”

“He wasn’t wrong.”

Garrus grumbles out a few choice curses. “Never said he was,” he says at last. “I’ll message Solana. Probably was going to head back to Palaven anyways.”

“Stay safe, Garrus.”

“You, too, Tali.”

* * *

 

Solana yells for an hour straight, then her subvocals break into a terrible, mournful keening.

If Garrus didn’t feel like a dick before-

Well.

He sets course for Palaven, and goes back to responding to everyone’s messages.

* * *

 

Palaven has rebuilt, the war ruined edges of its cities smoothed and fixed.

Cipritine has been mostly restored, all the broken, crumbled buildings cleared, and new towering skyscrapers erected in their wake. For only three years after the close of the most horrifying war the world has ever seen, Palaven is, by all accounts, thriving. And right in the goddamn middle of Cipritine, is a twisting silver statue, loosely warped into a humanoid shape.

Garrus stares, unable to move.

The figure is, for the most part, hardly defined, all distinguishable features warping into silver, then cracking, crumbling away at the edges, the shadows glittering the way her biotics lit up at night.

But the face-

_Her face-_

Her jaw set, cut, her eyes blazing the way they did when she threw herself into the line of fire, when she stared down the highest on the chain of command, when she planted herself in righteousness and dared people to move her. Her hair spills down her back in a swirl of silver, and she stands right in the heart of the city.

A human.

A _human_ , in the heart of the turian capital.

He clamps his mandibles tight to the sides of his face, shoulders his bag, and tries not think about how Palaven hasn’t been his home in years.

* * *

 

Solana hugs him tight, her subvocals trembling, when he shows up, and his father nods at him. More approval than he’s maybe ever given.

“Garrus,” Castis says. “I… Forgive me if this was presumptuous. I know how much you… cared, for your commander.”

Castis presses a spirit chain into Garrus’ hands, never once breaking eye contact. In the central pendant, he can feel the etched shape of a human face.

“Dad,” Garrus says, his voice weak.

“Welcome back,” his father says.

Neither of them comment on the way that Castis carefully does not say _home_.

Garrus can’t decide if that’s better or worse.

* * *

 

“Spirits,” Garrus whispers to himself, looking out over the quiet sunset. The trees rustle in the wind, the chime of their silver leaves gentle, eerie in the quiet.

Then, quieter, the spirit chain clutched tight in his hands. “Shepard.”

He takes a deep, rattling breath. “I’ve… I’m sorry, Shepard. It’s almost like Omega all over again. I was an idiot because you died, and I almost lost all my friends in the process. I have to- I don’t know if you can hear me, up at that bar. But I- Spirits, Shepard. I can’t-“ The words die in his throat.

The stars overhead glimmer, quicksilver, amused, and when the wind picks up, he can almost hear the rough husk of her laugh in the whisper of the trees.

Garrus closes his eyes, and breathes.

And breathes.

And breathes.

* * *

 

Garrus throws himself back into the rebuilding effort, this time on Palaven.

Victus remains Primarch, though from the way he’s been hinting, he’d rather someone else take over that title.

Naturally, every time Victus hints that he wants someone else who has shown themselves a skilled leader, with wisdom and foresight, and the aptitude to lead a militaristic society in times of peace, Garrus lets it drop that if he were ever to be promoted further he’d probably fake his death and go work on Earth as part of a peacekeeping corps where no one would ever be able to find him.

That usually stops Victus from saying anything for the rest of the week.

Then, the next week, Victus hints again, and Garrus counters, and so on and so forth.

Time trudges on, and Palaven rebuilds.

* * *

 

The first time it happens, Garrus is so startled, he stops functioning almost entirely.

“Tribunus Laticlavius Vakarian,” a turian woman says to him, and he pauses from where he’s running a series of schematics for a new senate building to Victus.

“May I help you?” he asks, blinking at her.

“Nitia Mercatus,” she says, dipping her head. “Would you like to meet me for dinner sometime?”

He stares.

* * *

 

Victus finds him nearly an hour later, still standing stock still, blankly staring at the spot Nitia had been.

“Something the problem?” Victus asks, amusement rippling in his subvocals.

“I…” Garrus stops, handing over the schematics. A long moment passes. “I was asked to dinner,” he says at last.

“Let me guess, Nitia? That woman’s been eyeing you up for weeks.”

“I… yeah, her.”

“Well, are you going?”

Garrus whips his head over, betrayal tearing like an open wound across his face.

Victus blinks.

Garrus clamps his mandibles back to his jaw, and wrestles the break in his subvocals back to a reasonable level and stares resolutely at the floor, his hands clenching, unclenching, into useless fists.

“Oh,” Victus says. “Garrus, I did not know.”

“Yeah,” he says, his words clipped, pained.

“I see,” Victus says, his voice softer.

A long moment passes. Around them, the marble chambers of the Council halls ring silent, empty.

“It’s been nearly five years, Garrus,” Victus says at last.

“You don’t… you don’t understand.” Garrus’ voice is hardly a whisper, only the steady echoing of pain in his subvocals. “It’s only ever been her. From the beginning. I can’t compare it to anything. Once you know someone like that… once you love someone like that, once you know what that _feels_ like, there’s nothing-“ He takes a ragged, harsh breath. “There’s nothing.”

Victus breathes in beside him, and sets a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry for your loss, Garrus.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says at last, and neither of them mention the way his voice cracks. “Yeah, I am, too.”

* * *

 

There are a few more offers made, here and there.

Garrus thinks of the quicksilver flash of her smile, the lovely, wine-red spill of her hair, and the way he could taste the crackle of electricity on her tongue when they kissed.

He breathes out, stuttering, and lets them down as gently as he can.

* * *

 

Time marches on, ever forward.

At night, his dreams whisper  _I love you, I love you, I love you_.


	5. uriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> only a fool would think that the afterlife could stop commander shepard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im really excited for these next few chapters. the last chapter will probably be the longest, but i hope you enjoy what i write!
> 
> i listened to The Babs Signal off the Lego Batman soundtrack, and What Shall We Die For off the pirates of the caribbean three soundtrack for this chapter.

Shepard wakes.

She wakes to a white floor beneath her cheek, and white walls that blend into a haze where they meet the horizon.

She wakes, feeling no pain.

She pushes herself to her feet, and can’t fight down the tangle of surprise as she notices the clean, sleek gleam of her armor.

_Ah,_ she thinks. _Of course._

Death had always been a certainty for her when she took the mission.

* * *

 

In the distance, there is a table, and the silhouette of a figure seated at it.

Shepard starts walking.

* * *

 

The silhouette is a turian.

A woman, with a strong jawline, pronounced mandibles, and blue tattoos tracing across her face.

“Commander Shepard,” she says, and even the notes of her voice sound familiar. “Please, sit with me.”

Shepard sits.

The turian smiles, an amused, awkward gesture as she looks down and away, and Shepard _knows_ that motion.

“You’re Garrus’ mother.”

Garrus’ mother smiles wider. “Clever. Yes, and no, but that is not the point.”

“Is Garrus okay?”

His mother looks away. “He is alive at the moment, if that is what you are asking.”

“At the moment?“

“ _For_ the moment, would be more accurate, I suppose. He has all but resigned himself to an early grave.”

Shepard sucks in an uneven breath. “I’m sorry. I- I didn’t want to leave him.”

“And yet, here you are.”

It isn’t quite condemning, but there is weight to her voice, a judgement that Shepard wishes she could escape.

“Where is here, anyways?” When she looks back across the table, it is no longer Garrus’ mother who watches her, but the Illusive Man.

“That’s a good question, Shepard. As far as you know, this is the Afterlife.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t look like what I expected it to look like,” she snaps.

He leans back, watching her. “That’s because it’s not.”

She blinks.

He flicks ash from the end of his cigar. “We may have had our differences, Shepard, but did you really think the universe would just let you be done? The noble martyr act is very cute and all, but it’s just not you.”

“What do you mean,” she demands, and in the space between breaths, she’s staring into Ashley’s eyes.

“You’re the smart one, Commander. What do you think it means?”

She can’t help the weak, ragged little breath of air that she draws in.

“You can’t quit yet, Shepard. We aren’t going to let you. There’s too many folks back there that still need you.” Ashley’s smile is sad, sad, sad, and clarity rushes back into Shepard’s lungs, the bright hot surge of anger hot on its heels.

“No,” Shepard snaps. “No, I killed- I made a decision. One that cost thousands- millions of lives.  I wiped out the geth, I killed EDI. I shouldn’t be allowed to live for what I did while they stay dead.”

Ashley studies her for a long moment. “How about you take this up with them, then?”

“How about you just fucking bring them back. It doesn’t have to all be at once, but- they deserve-“ Her voice breaks. “They deserve better than this.”

“Shepard-Commander,” Legion says, and her gaze snaps to them. “You ask the impossible.”

“No,” she says, her voice heavy, breaking all over again. “No, you all do. You ask me to just come back to life, in a world where I did _that_. I won’t go back. I won’t go back without EDI, I won’t go back without the geth. I won’t negotiate on this.”

Legion studies her for a long moment. “Shepard-Commander. You would refrain from life for geth.”

“In a heartbeat,” she hisses. “In a goddamn heartbeat.”

Legion shifts into EDI in the blink of an eye. “You would stay here? You would leave your crew behind?”

Shepard sets her jaw, tears burning, burning in her eyes. “They’re strong. They’re stronger than you know. They will push on.”

“And Tali?” EDI presses. “Liara, even? You would leave behind Garrus?”

Her hands shake, her knuckles white where they’re curled against the edge of the table. “He knew this would be the outcome. He knew what he was getting himself into.”

There’s a heavy, dual-toned sigh from the other side of the table.

“Yeah,” Garrus says. “Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I. Doesn’t mean it’s not like living with a hole in your chest.”

Shepard blinks. “You’re not dead.”

Garrus shrugs a shoulder and looks away.

Her hand flattens on the table, her body already half risen from her seat. “No, you son of a bitch, _you’re not dead_.”

“Not yet, sure. But now it’s only a matter of time.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean,” Shepard snaps.

Garrus huffs out a weak laugh. “Shepard, last time you died, you got to me a few minutes before I almost got my ass taken out by three separate mercenary gangs. Still nearly got half my face blown off. You’re gone now. What did you think was going to happen to me?”

“You _can’t_ ,” she argues, and her voice is terrible and breaking and weak. “Garrus, you can’t, that’s an order!”

Garrus raises his chin and sets his jaw. “How are you going to stop me? You’re dead. I have to do something. I can’t just stand by and let people be hurt. You taught me that.”

“Garrus. Garrus, please. Please don’t do this-“

“And who are you to stop him?” Thane asks her, his hands folded before him.

Shepard sucks in a breath. “He-“

“He is the master of his own life. If you so chose to give your life for others, why can he not? Hypocrisy has never been something you have been a supporter of, Shepard.”

She breathes in. “I need him to be safe,” she says at last, and even to her, it sounds like a concession. Then again, quieter, like a secret. “I _need_ him to be safe.”

“And he needs you, Shepard,” Thane says, and for however gentle his voice is, his words strike like the ripples of a rock breaking the still surface of a lake. “And not just him. They all do. We are your family, Shepard.”

Shepard closes her eyes, and breathes in.

Opens her eyes.

The Illusive Man stares back, a smug smile on his face.

“No,” she says. “I won’t go back without EDI. I won’t go back without the geth. Even if I have to take them back with me kicking and screaming. They deserve the right to choose if they want life or not. I had no right to take that from them.”

The Illusive Man goes still, still, still, his appearance rippling, warping.

When he speaks again, his voice rumbles and squeaks, a thousand voices mired together in a vast, shifting appearance.

“You have never made things easy, have you, Commander Shepard.”

She steels her spine. “No. Easy isn’t who I am.”

The creature smiles, its endless rings of teeth slipping from its face. “A test, then.”

Shepard breathes. “Name it.”

“The Reaper War claimed many souls. Defeat every soul that died through their own choices in the war in hand to hand combat, and we shall relinquish you, and the lives that you cut short.”

On the horizons, the silhouettes of thousands, millions linger, their eyes vacant, empty.

Shepard curls her fingers around the edge of the table, her knuckles going white. She pushes back, her chair grating like the low rumble of thunder, and rises to her feet.

The air crackles, electric, and she thinks she catches something fleeting flicker across the being’s face.

“Deal,” she says. The being smiles, bloody and cruel.

And in moments, the hoard is upon her.

* * *

 

Time stops existing after the first wave.

All she knows is the twisting, the steady, confident strength of her body, and the battle calm that purges thought from her mind. She moves, she fights, she bleeds, until all she can taste is the copper of her own blood, hot in her mouth.

* * *

 

And still, the souls swarm her.

A head wound causes blood to drip down, sealing over one of her eyes, and still she fights.

Her spine aches from the endless charge and recharge of her biotics, her nerves burn with overstimulation, and still.

She fights.

* * *

 

And fights.

* * *

 

And fights.

* * *

 

And fights.

* * *

 

She heaves the shade of a krogan across the space, and-

Nothing comes.

There is peace, and a long silence.

“I underestimated you,” The being says, all its infinite voices melding together in a dissonant chorus.

Shepard scrubs blood and sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she grits out, finally focusing her blurred vision on the thing and it’s endlessly shifting form. “Most people do.”

The thing makes a noise that’s almost amused. “I know this, now. Perhaps I should have borne better witness to your actions in the Reaper War. Who could have imagined that a human such as yourself could have stopped the gods from machines? Quite the _deus ex machina_.”

Shepard fights to calm her breathing.

“I wish to offer you an addendum. To our deal.”

“I’m listening,” Shepard says, her voice unsteady.

“I will give you twenty-four hours, of your human Earth time, to recover. To speak with the souls that wish to speak with you. After that time is passed, you will have the opportunity to attempt to defeat me. If you are successful, you may return to life with the lives of the geth and your AI. If you are unsuccessful, you continue fighting the souls of those lost in your Reaper War until either you victorious, or you are defeated.”

Shepard bares her teeth.

“Deal.”

* * *

 

Shepard sits alone for hours, scrubbing the blood from her body.

“Here,” a flanged voice cuts in. “Let me assist you.”

Garrus’ mother kneels beside her, a wet cloth in hand, and sets to work cleaning her injuries.

“Are you the Garrus’ mother for real this time, or that thing that’s watching me?”

Garrus’ mother laughs, a soft huff that’s all too familiar. “My name is Laelia, and it is truly me. That being is- Well. We are fairly certain it is some kind of gatekeeper to the afterlife. It keeps the dead in, and the living out. That is why it is so able to make these deals with you.”

Shepard hums, relaxing under the steady, smooth movements of wet cloth on her skin. “I always figured that Garrus took after you,” she says at last. “He looks nothing like those holos of his father he’s shown me.”

Laelia laughs again. “It’s true. Solana looks so much more like Castis than either of them will admit, but Garrus… he takes after me. Too much, sometimes, I think.”

Shepard looks over to her. “Why do you say that?”

“Well,” she sighs out, sorrow tightening her brow plates. “for all his temper, he is soft. Garrus’ anger usually comes from pain, from sorrow. He has a gentle heart, and he used to be unsure of how to handle the pain of giving it away too freely. These days he just sits by himself in the evening and watches the sunset, and tries to help build things.”

“Oh,” Shepard says, her voice thin and choked. “Oh.”

Laelia is quiet for a long moment. “He misses you, every day. Castis made him a spirit chain of you. The poor fool wears it around his neck.”

Shepard swallows hard, and looks away. “I didn’t want- I didn’t want to leave him.”

Laelia’s grip tightens on her shoulder. “And you _won’t_. You will defeat the Gatekeeper. It has already underestimated you once. And when you defeat it, and you find your crew, find my son again, you tell him I’m proud of him.”

Shepard sets her jaw, and takes Laelia’s hand in hers, her eyes blazing. “I will. I promise.”

Laelia smiles, just a bit.

“Shepard,” she says, soft, so soft. “ _God_ is a verb. It’s a force that warps reality, merely through existing.”

Shepard closes her eyes and breathes.

* * *

 

“You are a worthy Battlemaster,” Okeer says, and then laughs, an ugly, barking noise. “A human; a battlemaster. You are a strange one, Shepard.”

Shepard grins, and it’s feral. “I’ll be sure to tell Grunt you said hi.”

“ ** _Ha!_** I have no doubts. _Korbal_ , Shepard. Be sure to knock that _trobror_ off that turian’s face for me.”

* * *

 

“Shepard,” Ashley says, settling in across from her.

Shepard can’t help the sad curl of her lips. “Hey, Ash.”

Ashley grins, resting her weight back on her hands, her legs carelessly sprawled in front of her. “Still sticking it to the man, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shepard says, cleaning the blood from between her armor plates.

Ashley nudges Shepard with her toe.

Shepard ignores her.

Ashley nudges her again. “Hey,” she says, a shit-eating grin plastered across her face.

“Don’t.”

“Hey, Commander.”

“Ash, so help me-“

“Garrus? Really?”

“Oh, shut up, Ashley.”

“Was it the height? He is pretty tall. He also has big hands. Does that mean-“

“ _Ashley_.”

Ashley just grins at her, lazy and smug. After a moment, her smile fades, something sad and gentle taking its place. “I am happy for you, you know. I’m glad you have someone watching your back.”

Shepard tries to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Yeah. He,” She sighs. “He’s not the same person you knew. He’s changed a lot, and who he- who he _is_ … he’s a good person.”

Ashley takes Shepard’s hand away from her armor for a moment, folding it between her own. “Shepard. I’m happy for you. Out of anyone, you deserve this.”

“Thanks, Ashley,” Shepard manages, squeezing her hand back.

Ashley gives her a weak, watery smile, and for a moment, they are quiet.

Then-

“Also. Yes. He does.”

Ashley blinks.

Shepard resolutely keeps her attention on her armor, and tries her damndest not to laugh.

“Oh my God,” Ashley says.

Shepard can’t wrestle down the trembling smile that pulls at her lips.

“Oh my God, Shepard, you _dog!_ ” Ashley shrieks with laugher, and just like that, the years, the pain, the death all vanish, and they’re laughing alongside each other like they used to, joyous, and free.

* * *

 

“Shepard,” Thane says.

* * *

 

“Shepard-Commander,” Legion says.

* * *

 

“Shepard,” Mordin says.

* * *

 

Shepard closes her eyes.

The endless blank white space around her flickers grey.

* * *

 

“Commander Shepard,” the Gatekeeper says, its infinite voices ringing like the eerie after-echo of the Catalyst. “I have given you your twenty-four hours. Are you prepared?”

Shepard breathes out. Distantly, she can smell wet earth, feel the thrum of electricity beneath her skin.

“Are you?”

* * *

 

The Gatekeeper launches endless barrages of biotic energy, its form endlessly shifting from human to alien to beast all in the space between breaths.

Shepard lets her biotics light up her spine, and launches herself forward. The Gatekeeper lashes out, it’s twisting limbs turning serrated, and Shepard ducks, falling to her knees as she leans back, the razor edges passing just over her face, and twists to her side, blasting a shockwave at the Gatekeeper, sending it skittering, shifting into a harvester as it does so. It lunges and she dives, rolling out of the way as its teeth snap shut in the space left behind her.

She reaches out, grasping its head with her biotics, and _throwing_ , shoving it across the room.

The Gatekeeper snarls, and dives at her again.

* * *

 

The hours, days, pass in the duckdodgeweave as Shepard fights desperately for the lives of the geth.

* * *

 

Overhead, the white haze fades to dark cobalt grey.

* * *

 

The Gatekeeper lunges, it’s claws swiping past Shepard’s face as she rolls beneath it, biotic power licking up her spine, and in one fluid motion, she slams a shockwave directly into the Gatekeeper’s chest.

There is an inhuman shriek, and the room factures as the Gatekeeper staggers, bleeding, screaming with the force of a million voices.

Shepard staggers under crippling wreckage of the Gatekeeper’s scream, and in a heartbeat, it is up close before her, the claws clamping tight around her midsection, its twisting limbs wrapping tight around her arms, her throat. She struggles, but the vine-like limbs only wrap tighter, choking.

The Gatekeeper pauses from where it looms over her, splitting open to force its heart into the shape of the Illusive Man. It grins at her, Cheshire, twisted, eyes glowing, glowing, glowing.

“Commander Shepard,” the Illusive Man says, his voice ringing with the echoing infinite of the souls. He leans close, sharp teeth split in an ugly Glasgow smile, and she can smell the rot on its breath, even as the Gatekeeper’s claws and vines tighten around her waist, around her throat. “Do you give in?”

* * *

 

She closes her eyes.

In the still, she can hear waves against the beach.

The sunset scatters over the ocean, rich hues of crimson and rose reflecting off the indigo deep of the water, and the sea-salt breeze plays with the loose ends of her hair. Garrus smiles at her, and takes her hand in his.

She thinks of Laelia, of Mordin, Thane, of Legion. The geth, and EDI. She thinks of Anderson, of Hackett, of Victus. Wrex. Kaidan. Liara. James. Tali.

_Her crew._

She thinks of Garrus, alone, watching the sunset, a spirit chain hanging lonely and sorrowful like a noose around his neck.

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

Shepard opens her eyes.

* * *

 

“ _Never_ ,” she swears, and lunges forward, cracking her skull against his. The Illusive Man vanishes as the Gatekeeper reels back, its grip on Shepard loosening just enough for her to blast it with biotics, sending it flying, landing in a stumbling heap on the ground.

Overhead, the indigo blank of the midway space shifts, rolling into the thick, heavy clouds of a thunderstorm. Lightning strikes, and though the Gatekeeper has no face, Shepard sees its fear, its awe.

Shepard breathes in, letting the might of the storm, the rain, wash over her. Breathes out, and locks her gaze on the Gatekeeper.

“I’m Commander Shepard,” she says, taking step after resounding step towards it, her biotics crackling, twisting the very reality around her as she walks. “The first human Spectre. Savior of the Citadel. I defeated Sovereign. I chanced the Omega-Four relay, and destroyed the Collectors. I united the galaxy in the fight against the Reapers, and I destroyed the Reapers, ending their cycle.”

The Gatekeeper shrieks at her, a wordless, furious shatter as thunder cracks overhead. She throws her biotics out, slamming it to the ground, pinning it in place.

Her hair plasters to her face, her back, and her armor is soaked through, but power hums, confident, beneath her skin.

“I don’t give in,” she shouts over the rolling echo of thunder.

Her biotics light up, a bolt of undiluted force and fury, and for a moment, in the space between her breaths, all she can hear, all she can think of is the soft smile that Garrus gave her in the mornings, the quiet, reverent way he whispered her name, the way he said _I love you_ against her lips.

She breathes out, her spine a steel conduit for her resolve.

“I’m Commander fucking Shepard,” she snarls. “and **_I’m going home_.** ”

Shepard yells, drawing on all the biotic power left in her tired, battered body, feeling the dark energy burning burning _burning_ beneath her skin. She reaches out to the storm, reaches to the heavens, and with a breaking battle cry, releases all the charge into one, powerful strike.

There is a deafening explosion, and the world goes white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as referenced in the game, turians believe in spirits, spirits of people, of groups, of places. garrus references earlier in the story that he wonders if the spirit of a storm guides shepard. he's not entirely wrong.
> 
> thank you to everyone who's been reviewing this! your words mean so much to me!!!


	6. sarakiel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> religious experts are, effectually, losing their damn minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soon.

A year passes, and Garrus loses himself in the steady, constant pressure of work.

The rebuilding efforts aren’t easy – the endless annoyances of balancing rebuilding teams, and prioritizing one project over another is a constant weight on his mind – but it is work. Something to do, something to blindly throw himself into.

And so the days pass in a steady sway, a constant march ever onward.

When he gets back to the house late at night, his father greets him with tea and a look that’s almost proud.

It was everything Garrus had wanted once.

Once.

Now, alone in his room, he watches the moon rise and pretends his dreams won’t be not-quite-nightmares where he runs, and runs, and runs, endlessly chasing the husking whisper of Shepard’s laughter.

* * *

 

Victus gives the position of Primarch to Castis.

Garrus can’t help the relieved sigh that comes with the news. His father had always been well suited to leadership and duty.

Much better suited than him anyhow.

“Wipe that smile off your face, Garrus,” Victus says. “Don’t forget, your _father_ is Primarch. He can Court Martial you if you don’t wash the dishes.”

Garrus barks a laugh. “Come off it, Adrian. Don’t forget, he’s your boss now, too.”

Garrus catches a glimpse of Victus’ scowl as he leaves the room, and it’s enough to keep him grinning for the next week.

* * *

 

Still, his dreams whisper _I love you, I love you, I love you._

* * *

 

“I wouldn’t blame you, if you hadn’t noticed, Garrus,” Victus says over lunch.

“Noticed what?”

“The weather. We haven’t had so much as a radiation storm since… well. Since before the Reapers. I didn’t notice it at first either. A few earthquakes, here and there, but that’s expected. I didn’t realize what was missing since most of our climatologists were dead or displaced. But it’s been six years, and not a single storm.”

Garrus shrugs a shoulder, an aching afterecho of Shepard. “The Reapers destroyed the environment. That we’ve been able to settle and rebuild even this early on is nothing short of a miracle. You know that as well as I do.”

Victus considers him over his lunch. “Yes. Still, it’s odd. We have children who don’t understand why we build our homes with storm shelters.”

“Have any of our climatologists returned?”

Victus snorts. “Ha. Very funny, Vakarian. No, I believe we lost the few we had to the war. That, or they have settled down elsewhere. The humans though… they have taken to studying our planet with quite the tenacity. Their initial estimates haven’t accounted for all our seasonal changes, but they’re…” Victus glances at him and huffs another laugh. “You spent perhaps more time with humans than any of us. They learn remarkably fast. They’re also annoyingly tenacious.”

“ _Ha!_ Tenacious and stubborn sums up humans pretty well.”

“Tenacious and stubborn? Hm. I suppose you would know best. After all, they did certainly… rub off on you.”

Garrus chokes on his drink.

* * *

 

“Garrus, Liara,” Tali says, next time they have their monthly conference calls. “There is… something I would like to speak with you two about. It is… It is very private, you cannot let anyone know that I have told you this. It is… it is a matter of pride, to us quarians. We do not like outsiders knowing too much about our practices but this…”

“I’ve heard some concerning reports. Has something happened?” Liara asks.

Tali sighs and looks away. In the wake of the war, the quarians had reclaimed Rannoch, and it suits Tali better than Garrus could have ever thought. Her long lashes dust her cheeks as she averts her eyes, and he can actually see the nervous tick at the edge of her jaw as she fights with her words.

“In order to explain,” she says at last. “you need to know more about our religious practices. There are…nuances. That will be hard to understand if I do not explain.”

“Give me a second,” Garrus says, then he sticks his head out his office door. “Victus, I’m on break, don’t talk to me.”

Victus shouts something from the other room, and Garrus can maybe make out his father’s name before he shuts his door and locks it, and settles back into his chair. “Alright, no interruptions.”

Tali huffs, and Liara offers him a smile. “So responsible. What happened to the hotheaded C-Sec officer we used to know?”

A pause.

“I’m sorry,” Liara says. “That was callous of me-”

“It’s fine.” His voice edges on too sharp. “It’s fine, Liara.”

They are quiet for another long moment.

“A-anyways,” Tali says at last. “You need to know about us. We are… we are a people whose beliefs are focused around our ancestors. Our ancestors watch over us and offer us guidance beyond the Veil. When somebody dies, their body is burned, or, when we only had the Flotilla, the body was spaced. When the body is burned or spaced, we give offerings, in order to ensure the spirit or soul of the person has gifts to give to appease the Warden.”

Tali takes a deep, uneasy breath.

“The Warden, despite what it sounds like, isn’t really the Warden of souls. The Warden is more of a guard to the afterlife – those who have passed on must pass under its gaze to be admitted to the beyond. We offer gifts to help accelerate that process, so those we’ve lost can be as ease sooner rather than later. The Warden controls who goes in and who stays out, and vice versa.”

Liara’s breath catches abruptly, and Tali glances up, before looking back down at her hands.

“We lost someone, last night. Rel’Zemas vas Usela. He was old, he was content. He died without a mask, and it was perhaps one of the most peaceful deaths we’ve had in years. We prepared his body, prepared the pyre, prepared the offerings. The pyre burned for twelve hours, as they normally do. But-“ Tali’s voice breaks, a strange whisper of fear hissing through her words.

“Garrus. Liara-“ she hesitates again, and worry strikes through her expression. “The offerings were untouched. Twelve hours, surrounded by flames, and _every one of the offerings were untouched_. There are… there is only so much that can mean. Ral’Zemas either never got the opportunity to present the offerings to the Warden, or… the Warden wasn’t there. I… I am not sure which one is a more frightening option.”

Garrus sucks in an unsteady breath.

“I don’t know what this means for my people. I don’t know what this means for our ancestors. I suppose all we can do is wait. And hope.”

Liara is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t think it’s just your people, Tali. I have received reports from various other cultures – turians, humans, asari – everyone. There’s been a myriad of strange occurrences in the past few weeks, but particularly in this last week. It’s… Well, the reports range from strange dreams of dead loved ones, to one-“ Liara chances a glance at Garrus. “to some that are nearly incomprehensible,” she says after a pause.

She shifts, clearly uncomfortable. “The things that… many are saying that they’re being given messages from dead loved ones. Ones who died in the war. Unfinished business being tied up, and what not. Usually one dream, and then nothing more. If it was one person or another, that would have been one thing. But to have so many report this, with so many similarities about the battle-“

“Hold one a minute,” Garrus cuts in. “What battle?”

Liara stills, just for a second, and it’s enough of a tell for Garrus to realize she slipped something she didn’t want to.

“Liara, _what battle_.”

“You two need to sit down,” Liara says instead. “This… this may be hard to hear.”

“We’re already seated, Liara, quit stalling. You clearly did not want us to know about this battle, but _why?_ ”

“Because we asari can process our feelings so much better than you all can. It took me several days to really understand what I was hearing, and every time I hear an iteration of it, it’s still a shock. _To me_. I… I did not want to speak of it with you two, because I fear what you might… I fear it might be too much.”

“That isn’t something you get to decide for us,” Garrus snaps.

“I understand that, Garrus!” Liara shouts. Breathes in. Collects herself. Then, again, softer; “I understand that, trust me, I do. But this… this is going to be hard to hear.”

“Just tell us,” Tali cuts in. “What is that human saying. Tear the bandage from the wound?”

Liara sighs out, and when Garrus looks at her, _really_ looks, she looks _old_. Old, tired, and lit with something dangerous.

Something almost like hope.

“There are… similarities in some of what the people have been told. It’s all… very incoherent, because these dreams that they get, are usually too much of a blur. But everyone points out three things: A moment in the dream when the loved one became clearer, as if there was no longer the haze of a dream about them, but as if they were real. The next thing, is that the loved one immediately began urgently telling them everything they felt was important. To some people, this was goodbyes, to some this was advice. And to some… it was information. Always about the same, ending with the same message.”

“And that message was?” Tali asks, her voice a hush.

“ _She won the battle. Expect them._ ”

Garrus’ heart thuds, short, and painful, in his chest.

“She? Who is she? Who is the them? Liara?” Tali demands.

“I don’t have answers beyond that. Many people recounted that their loved ones hardly seemed to know what they were speaking about, or hardly believed what they were saying.” Liara goes quiet for a long while. So quiet, Garrus wonders if the sound or connection hadn’t cut out.

“There have been no names mentioned, and details haven’t really been given, but… But I, I can’t help but wonder-“ Liara stops herself, her hands curling into useless fists before her.

Garrus and Tali sit in silence with her for a long, long time, until the sun sets across Palaven, and Cipritine falls into shadows.

_She won the battle._

Garrus thinks of wine red hair flowing like a bloodied banner, and _wonders_.

* * *

 

“I’ll be on my way to Tuchanka, first thing tomorrow,” Liara tells him. “Has Wrex contacted you yet?”

Garrus blinks. “About what?”

Liara makes a noise in the back of her throat. “I see. Wrex is worried that an omen for the endtimes has appeared on Tuchanka. He’s requested some help dealing with it, and said he would need more if the situation worsened. I don’t particularly understand krogan beliefs, they aren’t often mentioned to outsiders, but something about Kalros bringing about the Void, if I understood what he was saying correctly.”

“Huh.” Garrus really can’t… think of anything more articulate to say than that.

“It is strange that this comes at such a time,” Liara muses. “Maybe the krogan were right, and the endtimes are really upon us.”

“Liara,” Garrus says.

“Perhaps this is the cause of all the other strange happenings? The Void? And Kalros?”

“Liara,” Garrus says again.

“Perhaps the Reapers were just the beginning. The start of the Void, and Kalros is the start of another situation similar?”

“ _Liara_.”

Liara jumps. “Oh, sorry, Garrus. Anyways, I shall be on Tuchanka within the next few days, and I will keep you posted on what is happening. Wrex will probably reach out to you next, so maybe start clearing your schedule if you can?”

Garrus sighs. “Yeah, I’m on it.”

* * *

 

_Asshole turian,_

_Something’s come up on Tuchanka. I need your help. As soon as you can._

_We saved your planet, now come help me save mine._

_I’ll explain when you get here._

_Wrex_

* * *

 

“I’ll be back. Wrex is worked up about something, and we… do kind of owe the krogan.”

Victus waves him off. “Get out of here, Vakarian. It hardly takes an expert to see you’ve been cooped up here for far too long.”

Garrus pauses in the doorway, before pushing away.

“Have fun, Victus!” he calls over his shoulder. “I’m forwarding you all my work!”

Victus laughs, and it’s sudden and startling enough to make Garrus pause.

“Joke’s on you, Vakarian. Your father’s sent me off to the Citadel to deal with the Council as of tomorrow. I’ve already had my assistant forward all my work to your desk.”

“You know, Victus,” Garrus says, leaning back against the doorframe. “It is such a pity that krogans are so much denser than humans and asari. I’m sure you’ll be back before you know it, lucky you. Unfortunately, I don’t know just how long I’m going to be out of the office. Good luck!” And he’s turning and.

Well, he wouldn’t exactly call it running _but-_

But, by the time he hears the particularly choice words that Victus has for him, he’s nearly out of the building entirely.

* * *

 

“Garrus,” Castis says, just before he leaves. “I know you are leaving, and that you intend to be back, but perhaps…” Castis sighs out heavily, shifting, before meeting Garrus’ eyes. There is an exhaustion, a strange sense of fear and wonder in his expression that Garrus has never seen before.

“I had a dream, last night,” Castis says at last. “I had a dream where I was dancing with your mother in our kitchen. We spoke of many things, for quite some time, but then…” Castis’ voice drops, going hushed, reverent. “Then, the dream it… it became clearer, somehow. More vivid. Your mother looked different. Healthier. More vibrant, and older. Like she would have been if she-“ Castis cuts off with a cough. “Well. The dream shifted, and she suddenly was saying a great many things to me, impressing the importance of those things. She gave me everything from political advice to insisting that your sister was much more like me than you will ever be, and that I should cut you a break, since you did help save the galaxy.”

Castis huffs a laugh, and Garrus cannot move from where he stands, frozen, at the door.

“Then, she looked at me, _really_ looked at me and made me promise to remember to tell you something. It was such an odd thing to say that I could not possibly forget.”

“What was it,” Garrus rasps, his heart lurching in his chest.

“Your mother said to tell you: _Garrus, do not forget – God is a verb. It has only ever been a verb. A force which alters and warps reality around it. You were never wrong about storms and their spirits._ ”

* * *

 

As Palaven falls away against the midnight backdrop of space, Garrus rests his forehead against the window.

He thinks of Spirit Chains, of Wardens, and of the quiet mystery of the afterlife; terrified, fragile hope weighting around his neck like a noose.

When he dreams, his dreams are of quiet, empty beaches; and the way the waves sound, soaked in the light of the sunset, lapping gently, endlessly, against the shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next three chapters are going to be a bunch of action packed fun. hold on to your horses, folks


	7. ramiel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a few familiar faces, a few new friends, and one pirate crew off to save the world.
> 
> well, a world, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a mesh of styles and took longer to get through that i expected. had to rewrite it at least four times to get closer to where i wanted it to be. i hope you all are satisfied with it!

Shepard wakes.

She wakes to dirt beneath her fingers, and the delicate fragrance of spring soft in the air.

The grass around her waves gently in the winds, whispering where the blades rustle along each other. The sky overhead stretches on for miles; pale blue, flecked with clouds. Somewhere in the distance she can hear birds chirping and the quiet song of crickets.

She breathes in, the scent of flowers sweet in the breeze. She curls her fingers in the earth, and pushes herself up.

The grassy plains stretch on for miles, endless flat plains that reach towards the horizon, interrupted only by the occasional break of trees. Between the long, waving grasses, she can make out pieces of metal, chucks of debris, all reclaimed by nature; turned into perches for birds, or nests, or even shelter from the sun for chipmunks.

“What the hell,” she breathes out.

She’s on Earth. Or, something like it.

She has to be dead. Really and truly this time.

The Earth she remembers wasn’t nearly so… _green_.

“Shepard,” EDI’s voice murmurs in her ear, and Shepard’s heart thuds, twisting in her chest.

“It seems you were stubborn enough to prompt the entire afterlife to give in to your demands,” EDI says. There’s a note of warm amusement in her voice. “The geth haven’t come back online yet, but my initial scans show that some of the intact geth bodies have begun powering up.”

She sucks in a ragged breath. “This… I’m- I’m alive?” Her voice comes out fragile, weak in a way she can’t remember ever being.

“Yes, Shepard,” EDI says, heartbreakingly kind. “You won.”

Shepard breathes out a sigh of relief that’s almost something like a sob, curling in on her side. The grass tickles her nose, and the earth beneath her fingers smells sweet.

Clean.

_Alive_.

Beneath the tranquil blue skies, the birds chip in the background, and the grass waves in the gentle breeze.

Her fingers dug into the cool earth, her long hair loose against the grass, Shepard closes her eyes and weeps.

* * *

 

It’s only when the sun begins to set, painting the sky every lovely, violent shade of crimson and indigo, the Shepard rises. Her N7 armor is long lost, and instead she’s wearing civvies – jeans belted at her midwaist, a t-shirt, flannel, and a jacket.

“EDI, you know whose idea it was to dress me up like this?”

“I believe Gunnery Chief Williams made the decision to remake you in civilian clothing,” EDI says, and Shepard sighs out.

“Well,” she says. “That answers that. Do you know where we are?”

“It seems we are about a day’s walk from Chicago, Shepard.”

Shepard blinks. “Chicago?”

EDI is quiet for a long moment. “Shepard, I believe a better question is not where you are, but when.”

Shepard breathes in, ragged. “EDI?”

“It’s been six years, Shepard. You’ve been dead for six years.”

* * *

 

Shepard closes her eyes.

* * *

 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

She breathes.

Six years of battle.

Six.

Years.

Around her, the trees rustle, soft and reassuring, the night winds gentle in their comfort.

She breathes in again. “Okay. Where’s my crew?”

* * *

 

She walks.

She walks until she reaches the sprawling suburbs of Chicago, then keeps walking towards the transit stations.

Nearly twenty-four hours of steady, quiet marching.

On her heels, a storm grows across the Midwest, thunder rumbling like a promise through her bones.

* * *

 

As Earth falls away, fading to a blue-green flicker through the shuttle window, Shepard breathes out.

“It seems your crew are, for the most part, all on Tuchanka. I am unsure of why. I am fabricating emails from the Admiral and Miranda both to see if I can siphon details. I am… unsure if you wish to reveal yourself just yet,” EDI murmurs through the com in her ear.

Shepard hums an affirmative, watching as a flight attendant walks past, her cart full of snacks and various drinks, both dextro and levo.

“As for the Normany and your armor-“

Shepard’s breath catches in her throat.

“The Normandy is stationed at the Citadel. It is in the process of being primed so it can be converted into a museum piece.”

“And your body?” Shepard asks, her voice a low murmur.

EDI makes an irritated noise. “Already posed and on display in the museum.”

“Where’s the museum?”

“There are two. One on Earth, which is where the Normandy is to end up, and one on the Citadel.”

Shepard hums. “Citadel it is. Think you can scramble the C-Sec scanners to let me through without a fuss?”

“Shepard,” EDI’s voice is almost reproachful. “I’m trying not to be offended by the implication you think I wouldn’t be able to.”

* * *

 

The museum is just about everything she hates.

There are VI’s of her scattered around, each with their own complete chronicling of one of the events she witnessed or participated in. And-

And besides the VI explaining Virmire and the decisions she made, there is also a VI of Ashley, a sly smirk on her face as she fills in the details.

Across the museum, she can catch flickers of Thane, and a bit of the high-pitched cadence of Mordin’s voice.

Shepard bites down on her lip. Hard.

She keeps her head down, shoulders slouched, her hoodie pulled low down her face, and shuffles through the museum, stopping to stare at each exhibit to avoid suspicion.

Well.

More suspicion.

“Shepard,” EDI hisses through the com in her ear. “Shepard, they made a VI of me.”

Shepard pauses where she’s looking at a sleek red geth frozen in a glass case.

EDI is quiet for a long moment. “It’s by where they have my body propped up on display. I may be able to hack it and take over, then set off the alarms in the museum. I will need you to hide somewhere where you will be able to break back in and destroy the glass encasing my body if I am unable to.”

Shepard makes a soft noise of affirmation.

“I will short out the security cameras, do not fear.”

“EDI, with you in charge, I never worry.”

“I don’t much care for lying, Shepard,” EDI says tartly, and Shepard grins.

* * *

 

Shepard hides in the Citadel ducts for a solid hour, before EDI’s voice cuts through her com. “Shepard, I am free, but… I do not think walking around like this will allow me to escape detection.”

Shepard hisses out a breath through her teeth. “Keep in the museum, and see if you can’t keep everyone out. I’ll figure something out and meet you there in about half an hour.”

* * *

 

Sneaking through air ducts is, admittedly, a lot more difficult when you’re weighted down with shopping bags.

* * *

 

EDI shoves herself into a hoodie and jeans, along with a pair of shoes, and a ballcap to boot.

“C-Sec is trying to get the doors open, Shepard. They are attempting to hack through my firewalls. I am worried if I stall them too much longer they may begin to suspect my true nature.”

Shepard hisses out a series of curses. “Don’t worry, EDI, we’ll be out of here in a few more seconds. I hope you’re okay with crawling through the air ducts though.”

Glass shatters in a horrific crash behind them, and Shepard whips around, pistol at ready.

The red geth stares back at her, the remnants of its case in shattered pieces around its feet. The panels around its headlamp flicker as it assesses her, then flare out in recognition.

“Shepard Commander?” it asks, its voice almost hesitant.

Shepard slowly lowers her pistol. “That’s me.”

The geth studies her again. “Shepard Commander, Synthetic AI Unit designation E-D-I.”

“My name is EDI.”

“Shepard Commander. EDI.”

There is a crackling, a screech from the sealed door.

“We don’t have time for this right now, I’m sorry,” Shepard hisses. “You have to come with us.”

“Of course, Shepard Commander,” the geth says, and with that, they’re hauling ass into the ducts.

* * *

 

They pause, midway through crawling through the ducts as they hear the rush of feet beneath them. Shepard looks back over her shoulder at the geth.

“What’s your name?”

The geth studies her, its panels moving. “Fawkes.”

Shepard snorts. “Alright, Fawkes. We have to steal the Normandy back, and I’m not sure how we’re going to sneak you through the Citadel. EDI is already going to be difficult enough.”

Fawkes looks at her for a long moment. “Shepard Commander. I am equipped with a tactical cloak.”

Shepard grins. “Now we’re talking.”

* * *

 

The Normandy sits, silent and unmoving, in the docking bay.

From where the three of them sit on one of the nearby benches – Shepard munching on a sub sandwich, EDI pretending to drink a soft drink through a straw, Fawkes smooshed between them, invisible with her tactical cloak active – they are entirely unremarkable.

“What’s the plan?” Shepard asks between bites. Behind them, the news consoles plead with the Citadel civilians to come forward with tips about the heinous robbery of the body of the AI who helped save the galaxy. Initial C-Sec reports say _it was a team of hackers and heavy lifters who pulled off the heist, so any large suspicious groups with unidentified cargo are to be stopped and reported_.

EDI tilts her head, assessing. “I am attempting to infiltrate the ship’s systems, without anyone noticing, so I can gauge what exactly remains on board, and if the ship is still flyable.”

Shepard nods, and goes back to wolfing down her sandwich. “My quarters still intact?”

EDI is quiet for a long moment. “Yes, but- It seems the majority of your personal belongings are gone. There is no archived evidence of them.”

Shepard pauses midbite.

“Gone?”

“According to crew testimonies, they all claimed you never really carried much with you on the ship.”

“But that’s not true, and they knew that. Garrus especially-“ Her breath catches in her throat as she thinks of blue tattoos painted black. Her heart twists painfully in her chest. “Oh. Oh, _no_. EDI, we have to hurry this up, they think I’m dead-“

EDI stares at her. “You are only just now processing this. I did mention it has been six years, yes?”

“Six years, sure,” Shepard argues, her voice trembling. “But I said- I said I would be back. I didn’t know if I would make it, but I’d come back from worse and- Oh, fuck. I sent those- they-“ she sighs out, setting her sub to the side, slumping forward, her face in her hands. “Fuck.”

“Good news, Shepard,” EDI says softly after a moment. “There is enough fuel for us to make it to Tuchanka, and further if need be.”

Shepard nods. “We just have to take over the ship, and get everyone off it. Also, I need my armor.”

EDI nudges Shepard’s elbow, and she glances over. The corner of EDI’s lips pull up, sly and secretive.

“I suppose it would be fair to say… while you were stealing clothing for me, I was also… retrieving clothing for you as well.” EDI opens one of the bags she’d been carrying with her, and Shepard catches a glance of an N7 logo, familiar black plated armor.

“EDI,” she breathes out, something warm and hot tangling in the back of her throat. “EDI, you’re the best.”

“I know,” EDI says, entirely too smug, which. In this? She absolutely deserves to be.

Shepard smiles at her, quicksilver, tugged to one side, and just edging on feral. “Let’s go steal ourselves back our ship.”

* * *

 

“I’ve sounded the evacuation alarms on the Normandy. By the time everyone evacuates, I will also have control of the locks and the entirety of the ship’s system.”

“Great going, EDI,” Shepard says, grinning at her between bites of her sandwich. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

EDI side-eyes her. “Your tone leads me to believe that you didn’t think we would get this far, even with my assistance.”

Shepard shrugs a shoulder. “I’m a realist, what can I say?”

“A realist.”

“Mhmm.”

“You. You who believed you could unite the warring races of the galaxy, and then did so, and you who defeated the guardian of the souls of the afterlife so you could bring back synthetic life. A realist.”

Shepard pauses, her mouth full of food as she stares at EDI. She swallows, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. “Well. When you put it like that.”

EDI makes a smug little noise, turning her nose up, and Shepard sighs out.

“All we have to do now is sneak onto the Normandy herself, and then get out of here.”

“Shepard Commander,” Fawkes says, still hidden by her tactical cloak. “Recommend using a rapid transit shuttle to reach the Normandy. Less of chance of identification.”

EDI pauses for a long moment as Shepard shoves the rest of her sandwich in her mouth.

“It is a tactically sound plan, Commander,” EDI says at last.

“Alright, get the ship in the air. We’ll highjack a transit and take it to meet the ship. Think you can bring her into range for us to get the transport to her, but keep her out of view while C-Sec fusses?”

EDI sniffs. “This is the third time today you’ve doubted my capabilities, Commander.”

Shepard just laughs.

* * *

 

And so, one stolen shuttle later, Shepard, EDI, and Fawkes are circling around the Presidium.

“I don’t think this is wise, Shepard.”

“I know, I know. I just… It’ll be two seconds.”

“We could be spotted any second.”

Shepard sighs. “No one’s going to look twice. Besides, those VIs looked nothing like me, and folks forget details easily.” Shepard pauses. “I’m honestly offended they thought I’m that small. My VIs looked like they couldn’t even bench fifty.”

“I think Fawkes and I are the most easily identifiable, and unlike Fakes, I don’t have a tactical cloak.”

Shepard makes an amused noise. “You’ve got your hood up and your hat on. We’ll be fine. Promise.”

The wind picks up, blowing their hoods and hats from their heads.

“Shepard,” EDI says, her voice sharp.

Fawkes peaks up from the back, studying the buildings, the greenery beneath them. “Old Machines. Rebuilding,” she says.

Shepard watches the top of the Presidium pass beneath them, her eyes misted over, the wind whipping through her hair. Beneath them, a small group of humans and turians glance up at them, before continuing their discussion. Shepard circles back around to the top of the Presidium, giving it one last sad, longing look, before shaking herself.

“Alright, EDI,” Shepard says, her voice a tired sigh. “Bring the Normandy around.”

“As you say,” EDI says, then pauses, giving Shepard a look that’s almost sympathetic, almost _gentle_. “Commander… you will have a chance for another one of your dates. We will find him.”

In the distance, the sleek silhouette of the Normandy flickers into view.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice pitched strange and off-kilter. “Yeah, we’ll get him.”

EDI makes a soft noise, and then there is silence as Shepard steers her little crew back to their ship.

Back to their _home_.

* * *

 

“Shepard-Commander,” Fawkes says, as the outline of the Normandy looms ever closer.

“Hm?”

“We are being followed.”

Shepard whips her head back, and sure enough, there’s another rapid transit shuttle bearing down on them. The turian’s features are shadowed and impossible to make out, but Shepard can see the top of a long crest.

“Removing interference,” Fawkes says, raising her shotgun.

“ _No!_ ” Shepard and EDI shout in unison. EDI dives on Fawkes, wrestling the shotgun from her.

“No killing,” EDI snaps.

Fawkes’ headlamp panels flare, before she goes quiet. “Parameters accepted, mission understood.”

Shepard breathes out a sigh, and EDI’s shoulders slump, before they chance another look back.

“He’s closing in rather quickly, Shepard. What was that you said about no one looking twice?”

The Normandy is so close now, Shepard can nearly taste the crisp, clean air of her cargo bay, smell the faint echo of gunpowder and gasoline that clings to the ship’s walls. She tightens her grip on the wheel.

“EDI, start closing the cargo bay door. Get ready to jump.”

“Understood.” EDI says, pulling Fawkes up with her to the front seat.

As the turian bears down on them, Shepard’s biotics lick up her spine.

* * *

 

The cargo bay doors are half closed by the time they reach the Normandy.

Shepard braces herself, balancing on the back of her seat. Her biotics sing beneath her skin as the distance between the shuttle and the Normandy vanishes.

She holds her breath.

Then-

“ _Go!_ ” she shouts.

They jump.

She throws herself forward, blindly, towards the Normandy.

The rapid transport sputters out, and tilts away, and for one long, terrifying second, there is nothing but the sound of her own rasping breathing, and the spinning emptiness of falling.

Her breath stutters, and the icy chill of Alchera whispers at the edges of her mind.

And then they are crashing though the cargo bay doors, tumbling onto the warm steel.

Shepard lets out a shaking breath breathing in the metallic tang of her ship, the solid hum of her floor beneath her fingers, before she pushes herself up, shakily forcing herself to her feet.

The cargo doors are nearly closed, and still the turian still closes in, his speed unflagging.

“Don’t do it,” Shepard breathes out.

The shuttle speeds closer, and the turian shifts, bracing himself, getting ready.

“ _Please_ don’t do it-“

He jumps.

Shepard watches, horrified, as the turian soars through the air, arms outstretched-

His talons just missing the edge of the ship.

She sees a split second of _fear_ cross his brow before he falls below the ship.

Panic sears through her veins, and she lunges to the door, throwing out her biotics, grabbing the falling turian in a crackle of dark energy.

“EDI, open the damn door!” she grunts, her voice strained under the weight of the turian. She lets out a yell, and with a triumphant heave, she drags him into the ship. He crashes into her as she pulls him in, and they stumble to the ground in a heap.

“God _damnit_ ,” she curses. “God. Damnit.”

The turian looks up at her. And freezes.

“Spirits,” he says.

Shepard freezes too.

“ _Spirits_ ,” the turian repeats.

Shepard stares, unable to believe her eyes.

The turian stares back, just as shocked, his mandibles hanging loose, his jaw dropped open.

“Primarch Victus,” she says at last. “Fancy seeing you around here.”

“ ** _Spirits_**. Is that really…?”

Shepard chances him with a weak, hesitant smile. “As far as I can tell. If Cerberus grew me, they wouldn’t bother putting these scars back across my face. _Not dignified enough_.”

Victus’ gaze roves over her face, tracing the sloping scar that slants below her eye and across her nose, the one that splits her brow, and the thin gash that accents her jawline. “Where have you been? The galaxy pronounced you killed in action. You-“

And suddenly, there is a rage that Shepard can’t explain that flares across his face, his browplates pulling in tight, his mandibles lowering so she can catch the full, ferocious display of his teeth. “No offense meant, Commander Shepard, but you had better have a damned good reason for being gone for so long.”

“I was dead,” she says, steeling her spine, the current of _command_ rushing through the undertones of her voice. Victus doesn’t exactly flinch, but the fury vanishes from his face, replaced with something like disbelief or sorrow. “I was dead, I woke up suddenly not dead about two days ago. Heard some not so good things about what my dumbass crew was getting up to, so I have to go pull their asses out of the fire.”

Victus studies her for a long moment, before letting out a huff that’s almost amused. “If the Reapers could not stop you, the fool were we for thinking death would have any more sway.”

Shepard cracks a smile. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Spirits,” he breathes out. “I thought I recognized you, and then I saw the AI. When you jumped into the Normandy, I was either going to arrest you for stealing, or accuse you of being a copycat but I would have never imagined….”

Shepard sighs out something that’s too tired to be a laugh. “I wouldn’t blame you. Despite the Illusive Man being dead, I have no doubts that Cerberus probably still has a cell or two active somewhere. Plus after the whole… thing with the other clone we had to take care of back then-“ She goes quiet for a long moment, lost in her thoughts. A beat, and Victus watches her eyes mist over and a sad, nostalgic smile tug up her lips. Another moment passes and Shepard shakes herself back into the present. “Point is. I’m not a clone, wouldn’t blame you if you still thought I was though.”

Victus huffs. "There were already few enough alive with your charisma, luck, and sheer skill before the war. That you were able to bring the geth and your AI back from the dead along with yourself speaks enough towards who you are."

"I appreciate your faith in me, Primarch. I just hope my crew feels the same way when I show back up."

"You haven't spoken to them yet?"

Shepard sighs. "I don't know if you've heard, but they're a little occupied. Besides, a message of _hey, surprise, not dead_ , wouldn't exactly go over well with them."

Victus laughs. "I suppose that is true. Were you to send such a thing to Garrus, he'd probably have a conniption, and then accuse you of being a fake."

Shepard goes quiet for a long moment. Victus watches the series of emotions play over her face. Heartbreak, sorrow, longing, pain, and something too ugly, too scrubbed raw to be anything but love.

Victus clears his throat. “Well, then. Now that we have the complications of your identity taken care of, I don’t suppose you want to get this… what is your saying. This show on the road?”

“Primarch, are you applying to join my little pirate crew?” Shepard asks, good humor back in her voice, a sly curl to her lips.

“I’m not Primarch any more. And I can’t deny piracy has always held a certain… I wouldn’t exactly call it appeal, but it has always been an interesting concept for me.”

Shepard grins. “Both my XO’s aren’t around right now. One’s on Tuchanka, the other one is off _God_ knows where doing God knows what. So, the spots open, if you want it.”

Victus grins. It’s a rusty, feral sort of thing, and Shepard can’t help grinning back.

“Count me in, Commander.”

“EDI?” Shepard says, and beneath their feet, the Normandy’s engines rumble, warm, powerful, and familiar. “Set course for Tuchanka. Let’s go save our crew.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> give me buff shepard, or give me death.


	8. raphael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> is it too little too late?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listened to "what shall we die for" off the pirates of the caribbean 3 soundtrack while writing this one, as well as survivor by 2wei.
> 
> shorter one to build up for the next two

_“… galactic meteorologists are still trying to explain the sudden surge of storm activity that has begun occurring in most planets that were affected by the Reaper Invasion. As we reported earlier, Earth had its first thunderstorm in a bit over six years just yesterday. This morning, Palaven, Illium, and a few other planets followed suit, each with their own respective version of storms occurring. These strange phenomena, alongside the numerous reports of dead loved ones communicating with the survivors through dreams, has spurred a new wave of religious fanatics claiming that the end times are drawing near, each facet placing the blame on a different group._

_In other news, Citadel security is desperately putting out rewards for information on the criminals who, not only stole several iconic pieces of galactic history from the Citadel museum, but were also able to make off with one of the most advanced and storied ships in the fleet, Commander Shepard’s own Normandy, and take one of the ambassadors to the Council from Palaven hostage. Unfortunately, both the ship and the criminals have entirely disappeared from radar, and we no longer have any clue about potential motives, or possible whereabouts.”_

“Holy shit,” Joker says from where he’s hunched over the table. “First the… how many is it, now? Five? Six thresher maws? And now the goddamn Normandy’s been stolen. How do you steal a ship from the Citadel?”

Garrus grunts. “You’ve stolen the Normandy before.”

“Yeah, but I had EDI. If you haven’t noticed, _Garrus_ , we don’t have AI anymore. Or any synthetics, for that matter. What I don’t get is why they took a turian hostage. The Normandy doesn’t have anywhere to store prisoners.”

“We don’t like knowing that one of our own is hostage. The Senate back home will probably scrape together whatever they need to pay the ransom fee, or take the Normandy down ourselves.”

“Oh, great. That’ll look good.”

“I’m not any more pleased about this than you are,” Garrus snaps.

“The Normandy is my _baby_ , it’s all I had left of-“

They all fall silent, save for the quiet percussion of gunfire and explosions in the background.

Garrus looks away and goes back to cleaning his rifle.

“If you two are done pissing on each other,” Wrex says, “We have thresher maws to kill. And no, it’s not five or six. Latest scout reports put it at about fifteen that have emerged. All their fussing has stirred up all the feral varren and the klixen in the area. Been a few reports of harvesters in the mix as well.”

“You know,” Liara says, her voice deceptively light. “I had thought fighting Reapers would be the worst situation we would have gotten ourselves into. Couldn’t resist a challenge, could you, Wrex?”

Wrex laughs, a low, rumbling thing. “And risk being overshadowed by the turians for the most fucked up planet? As if.”

Garrus sneers at him, before turning back to his gun.

“Grunt, Jack, and Samara are already out there holding the line. Vega, Alenko and Tali are on their way as well.”

“Called in all those favors you’re owed did you, Wrex?” Garrus jibes.

“We saved your damn planet, Vakarian, I’d consider that a pretty big favor. I’d say you owe me at least four separate favors.”

“Four threshers, then I’m done. Got it.”

“What the hell do you need me for, Wrex,” Joker cuts in. “I don’t know if you noticed, but someone’s literally stolen the Normandy.”

Wrex shrugs a shoulder. “It’ll show up. Can you imagine trying to pawn that thing off on the black market without catching anyone’s attention? Can you imagine anyone actually trying to buy the galaxy’s savior’s ship?”

Joker huffs out a breath. “Alright, fine. But what do you need from me?”

Wrex grins. “Easy. I need aerial support.”

“You want me to fly the shuttle around the thresher maws to distract them. _You want me to play bait._ ”

Wrex grins wider. “Hey, _I_ didn’t say it.”

“Admit it, Joker,” Garrus says, flicking a mandible into a tight smile. “You’re just as fucked in this as the rest of us are.”

“Fuck you,” he says at Garrus, “fuck you, and fuck you.”

“C’mon, Joker, you’ve got a shuttle to catch. You’re gonna need time to paint _bait_ onto her.”

Joker sends an obscene gesture over his shoulder as he shuffles off.

Garrus loads a round into his rifle, and glances over at Wrex. “Ready?”

* * *

 

It’s been seven, long, exhausting hours, and they’ve only managed to put down five of the thresher maws.

“Hey, Wrex!” Garrus calls over the com system, watching as Wrex ducks to cover, reloading his shotgun.

“ _What_ ,” the krogan roars back.

“I’ve helped put down four, I think I’m gonna call it quits. I even went a bit further, and helped you with a fifth. Think this is it for me!”

“ _Ha!_ ” Wrex laughs loud enough that Garrus doesn’t even need his com to hear him. “How typical of you turians. No stamina in a fight whatsoever.”

“Can you two _shut up_ ,” Jack snaps. “We have ten more fucking threshers to kill, you know!”

“What,” Garrus drawls. “He was just giving me some friendly encouragement,” Garrus calls as he puts down two of the klixen closing in on Jack’s position.

“What _I_ don’t get,” Jack snarls as she launches another shockwave at the threshers, “is _why_ there are so many, and why Kalros isn’t here!”

“I am certain we are all better for Kalros’ lack of appearance,” Samara calls, ducking back down to cover. “But she raises an excellent point. Typically, there are at most, three thresher maws to a planet. I need to ask, Wrex, what have you done?”

“I think I know just _how_ there are so many,” Wrex says, shooting a few varren at point-blank range. “But that’s a lengthy explanation I’m not bothering with. If we get through this, I’ll tell you all over drinks.”

Jack laughs, though it’s breathless and weary. “I’m holding you to that,” she shouts over the chaos.

Garrus lets himself grin, and then they are fighting again.

* * *

 

Overhead, Joker swoops past, diverting the thresher’s attention with the tiny shuttle.

“This is such a bad idea,” he hisses under his breath. “Why’d I let Wrex talk me into this.”

One of the threshers lunges, and Joker nosedives the poor shuttle, yelling all the while as he plunges into freefall, then pulling up sharply just in time to avoid a hissing spray of acid.

His com crackles to life, a steady ping.

“I’m a little busy,” he shouts, answering it.

“Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau,” an unfamiliar turian voice says across the com. “This is Advisor Adrian Victus from Palaven. I heard that the situation my subordinate, and by extension, you, are in is quite the mess. Do you require backup?”

Joker laughs, a bitter, sharp thing. “We’ve got more threshers than we can count here. They’re a pain in the ass when it’s just one, and right now I think we have at least ten of them still on the ground.”

Joker pulls the shuttle away from the battle, back towards Urdnot. The threshers fade out from behind him, as the back engines sputter out. “Ah, shit. No offense, but, uh. I really don’t think there’s much you can do to help-“

With a sound like the earth shattering, the Normandy explodes into view overhead.

“I can understand why you would think that,” Victus is saying. “However, I happen to have some very powerful assistance here with me, and a ship I’m sure you are familiar with. As you may know, this particular ship was a joint collaboration in its original state between both turians and humans, a collaboration that its Commander has kept in mind _very_ well-“

There’s a muffled voice from somewhere in the background that spits through the com speakers, clearly annoyed, and if Joker really listens he can maybe make out the shape of harsh, too recognizable curses.

His fingers spasm around the wheel.

“Unfortunately,” Victus continues, “however well our current pilot can fly it, she is certainly no expert and insists that you are much better than her.” There is humor in Victus’ voice, and Joker’s heart is twisting in his chest.

The com crackles again, and then-

“C’mon, Joker,” a terrible, wonderful voice says, and Joker’s heart stops altogether. “Get your ass in gear. We have some thresher maw ass to kick.”

* * *

 

“Ten left,” Garrus yells. “I took the killshot on three of them, meaning I’m not buying tonight!”

“I claim the final blows on the remaining two, or perhaps you all missed where I tore them in half?” Liara adds in, ducking to cover.

Jack snorts. “As if. I had at least one of those.”

“You’re getting old, Wrex!” Garrus calls, and laughs again as he hears the krogan spit some particularly choice words out.

“Perhaps it is my turn to claim the throne,” Grunt says, casual as you please, and Wrex spits more, angrier, choice words.

Samara lets out a yell, and in a shower of gore and biotics, another thresher rips apart.

Nine left.

“It seems we biotics are all tied up with a single kill each. Perhaps one of you two would like to hurry and take care of another two in order to take back the lead from Garrus?” she says, cool and collected as ever.

“How much longer until Alenko, Vega, and Tali show up?”

“Fuck’s sake, Garrus, I haven’t exactly been watching the time!” Wrex snarls back at his perch.

“Typical krogans. Can’t even multitask.”

Grunt shoots a harvester point blank in the face, watching as it crumples to the ground. “Kalros must be displeased.”

“It’s not just Kalros. _I’m_ pissed they’re on my planet, too!” Wrex bellows, charging a line of klixen and varren, leaving wreckage in his wake.

Liara shouts, a breathless, triumphant thing, and another harvester crashes to the ground.

Eight left.

“Three to three, Garrus. You had better watch that lead of yours.”

“Hey,” Jack snaps. “You’re only at two, I told you, that other kill was mine!”

Liara makes a noncommittal noise. “If you want to call that pathetic shockwave a final blow, then I suppose I can see your point of view.”

Jack makes an outraged noise, and Garrus can’t help but laugh.

* * *

 

He reloads, aims, fires, reloads, aims, fires, loses himself in the familiar haze of battle when-

When-

“Garrus!” Jack shouts, panic rising fast in her voice. “Garrus, _look out!_ ”

He turns, just in time to see the snarling, gaping maw of a harvester closing in on his position.

Garrus dives out of the way, firing blindly at the thing, but all it does is shriek, rattling his skull with the force of its rage.

It lunges for him, whipcord fast, and there is a crash, there is gunfire, and there is silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops. i did say i couldnt decide if i wanted the angst to be over yet, right?
> 
> next chapter is another interlude, and then there is the final chapter, and then an epilogue. stay tuned, and let me know what you thought!


	9. you want a better story. who wouldn't? love on the water, love underwater, love, love, and so on. (a survival interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what's in a name?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another interlude for more context, backstory, and a quick beak from the action. Added two more chapters to the total chapter count. One for this interlude, and another for the epilogue. Might be one more interlude. I’m not sure yet.

Shepard is seven years old when her father first takes her out to stand in the storms.

She is seven years old, and her name is not Shepard.

Not yet.

* * *

 

The storms on Mindoir are not quite like the storms on Eden Prime or the storms on Earth.

In the sticky heat of the summer sun on Eden Prime and Earth, the storms build slow and lazy. A steadfast promise of destruction that hangs on the edge of the horizon until the winds send it in, roaring and raging.

On Mindoir-

On Mindoir.

The air hangs heavy, like a promise, weighted and suffocating. The skies clear and quiet, the sun setting low in the sky, staining the heavens with the vibrant colors of sunset. The birds will be silent, the bugs hiding beneath the crops, and the world waits, suspended on the precipice of the flood.

And then in the blink of an eye, in the snap of a bowstring, the clouds explode into existence, the rains washing down over the crops. The water rises to the ankles, and then to the knees in minutes, a dangerous flash of a flood, illuminated only by the flicker promise of lightning.

But-

But safe on the flood platforms, safe on the watchtowers-

Well.

The rain seems to hang, suspended in slow motion as it gracefully streams towards the soil, slow falling meteors raining from the heavens to a symphony of thunder, accompanied by the wild, joyous flicker of lightning, dancing though the darkened skies.

“Look,” her father says. “This is your name. Remember it.”

Shepard, who is not yet Shepard, watches the skies froth and rage, listens to the cacophony of thunder rumbling, swelling in her bones.

She smiles.

* * *

 

And then she is sixteen, and her father is shoving her out the door.

“ _Run,_ ” he hisses, and his eyes are wide, terrified. “ ** _Run_**.”

She listens to the gunfire echoing in the distance, and flees, racing for the fields.

The air is still, and the birds are quiet.

* * *

 

And here is how it happens.

How it really begins.

The first time Shepard is maybe something like Shepard.

* * *

 

She is sixteen, and she stranded in the wheat fields of Mindoir, and the air tastes like the metallic bleed of copper and ozone, and there is a batarian smirking down at her, a cruel, horrifying twist to his lips as he spouts some shit or some other about vengeance and promise, and how much good money the slavers will pay for a little gem like herself.

Her biotics crackle, lick up her spine, and her fingers flex where they grip the earth. Her face must do something because another batarian laughs and nudges her cheek with the barrel of his gun, making some comment about how _pathetic humans look when they’re scared_.

There is a flicker, a heart-beat fast tang of electricity that sparks in the air, and then the storm is upon them. The winds wail their fury, the torrential might of the rains pouring down in sheets over the waving wheat fields. The thunder rages, furious and overwhelming, and the batarians are glancing at one another, nervous, worried, as the water rises around their knees before they can blink.

And Shepard, who is still not yet Shepard-

She closes her eyes, and her spine burns.

Here, in the heart of the storm, surrounded by its rage, its fury, its violence, she feels no fear.

She breathes in, feels the rain plaster her hair to her cheeks, and rises to her feet, her spine burning, burning, burning with the static spark of her wild, untamed, untrained biotics. She thinks of the fear in her father’s eyes, the last kiss her mother pressed to her forehead, tastes the rich petrichor in the air, and looks down the barrels of the batarian’s guns. Thunder roars overhead, and Shepard lets out a grief-stricken, furious battlecry, and in a blaze of blinding light, her biotics explode.

* * *

 

She comes to minutes, hours, days later, to the soft whisper-patter of the rain against her face.

She is alone, alive, in the center of a still smoldering crater. Around her, the bodies of several batarians stain the mud red, red, red.

She breathes in.

Breathes out.

Overhead, the thunder rumbles a comforting song, and the rain caresses the tears from her cheeks.

 _Look_ , the echo of her father’s voice whispers.

_Look._

_This is your name_.

* * *

 

She can’t force her mouth open to speak when the Alliance picks her up, when Anderson presses a mug of tea into her hands and drapes a shock blanket over her shoulders.

She can’t force her throat to make a noise when Executive Officer Hannah Shepard offers to _look after the poor traumatized thing. A change of pace won’t bring up bad memories, and it’ll give her something stable_.

Anderson can’t find her records, can’t find her parent’s names, and Hannah refuses to name a child that’s already been named.

So she is named Shepard in the Alliances official records. Just Shepard.

But she is not _Shepard_ yet.

* * *

 

It’s seven months, one week, and three days, twenty-one hours and sixteen minutes on the dot that Shepard-who-is-not-yet-Shepard finds her voice again.

She takes Hannah Shepard’s hand in hers, looks her in the eyes, breathes in.

Then, softly, so softly, her voice the husking rasp of wheat shells in the rain, she breathes out; “Áinfean.”

Her name sounds not quite as rich as her father’s lilting voice, and her voice is rusty with disuse, the name rasping out over two slow syllables, cracking off her tongue like _awn_ , then a quieter, softer _fee’un_ , the _fee_ part slipping closer to a _y_ noise, like the trail off of lightning flicker into the rumble of thunder.

Hannah sucks in a hissing breath through her teeth, something like joy or sorrow burning at her eyes as she gathers her adopted daughter into her arms.

“Thank you, Áinfean.” The name doesn’t quite roll off her tongue, coming out clunky and hard, the _awn_ drawn out a bit too long, the _n_ a bit too harsh and loud. Shepard’s grip tightens around her, though, and Hannah figures it’s enough.

It has to be enough.

* * *

 

The next time she makes a noise, it is twenty-three minutes later, when it starts raining on Earth.

She stands in the wash of rain, her face tipped towards the sky, and screams.

Screams herself hoarse and raw, a fury-stricken, grief-ridden torturous sound that’s torn from beneath her ribs like a wound.

She screams, and screams until her voice deserts her, and she sinks to the sodden ground, and sobs.

* * *

 

That night, after wrapping her daughter in blankets and soothing her to sleep, Hannah searches the extranet for her daughter’s name.

 _Áinfean_ , she searches.

The answer she finds is both exactly what she does and does not expect. A prophecy, a promise, a vow tied up in the long, red-ribbon ripple of her daughter’s hair.

Hannah thinks of the way it took a week for the Alliance to realize Áinfean’s hair was naturally red, not just dyed from the blood pooling from the batarians she killed, or the lightning branch scars that lace from her spine and across her shoulder blades, a bitter reminder of the untrained explosion of biotics that she used to defend herself, or the way the rains on Mindoir didn’t stop for months after the attacks, until all the bodies of the colonists and the slavers had been washed away, borne into the sea.

Hannah looks at her daughter, freshly seventeen and curled in a ball on the sofa, nestled beneath heavy blankets.

She looks at her daughter, and wonders.

* * *

 

It storms for a week before she tells Hannah that she’s shipping off to join the Alliance and the ICT. Hannah hugs her tight, makes her promise to write, and whispers again and again how proud she is of her.

* * *

 

Later, to the galaxy’s fury, she’s becomes the first human Spectre, and pulls together a rag-tag crew of humans and aliens, commanding a ship of her own.

She walks with steel in her spine, introduces herself as Shepard, just Shepard, and when she powers up her biotics, the air tastes of ozone.

 _Look_ , her father’s voice whispers, as she faces down Saren and his geth armies, leaving destruction in her wake, clawing, and bleeding, and fighting furiously to her victory.

_Remember it._

* * *

 

Still, she is not _Shepard_ yet.

* * *

 

Suspended over Alchera, staring up at the silhouette of the Collector vessel, she tastes the violence of rage on her tongue, copper and electric, as she roars in helpless anger and grief, until there is no more air, and silence takes her body hurtling through the thin, icy atmosphere.

* * *

 

She storms back into the world, vengeance burning under her skin. Cerberus hisses orders at her, and she bares her teeth into something they think is a polite smile.

Behind grit teeth, she rages, and rages, and rages.

* * *

 

And then there is Garrus, with all his anger and dry humor, and the tight, white-hot burn of violence trembling beneath his skin. They are both tired, run ragged, only their fury keeping them breathing, keeping them fighting most days, and when he falls in step behind her, shouts out victory with every headshot in the familiar heat of battle, something slips beneath her ribs, like the sharp blade of a knife, settling in close to her heart in a way that is so, so comfortable.

He flicks that crooked, amused grin at her, and she thinks of the soothing whisper of rain on her skin, and the way the rumble of his subvocals echo like the gentle caress of thunder.

* * *

 

 _Remember_ , whispers her dreams.

_Remember, remember, remember._

* * *

 

She tears through the Collector base, fury singing a violent song in her bones, through her veins, and she can’t fight now the vicious satisfaction the sneers across her face as she cuts the com to the Illusive Man, and the quiet relief she feels as she pulls her entire crew safely from the clutches of the baby Reaper.

* * *

 

Where she walks, destruction follows in her wake.

A trail of debris in the aftermath of a storm.

* * *

 

No one heeds her warning about the Reapers, and when they come, they beg her for her help. Help she gives, her teeth bared in a furious grin.

She has always been a master of hiding her rage in a façade of passivity.

Still, her father frowns at her in her dreams as he points to the skies, to the fury and rage of the storms. _This,_ he says.

* * *

 

She unites the galaxy.

And she is still not yet Shepard.

But she is something close.

* * *

 

 _This is your name_ , her father’s voice reminds her, as the Crucible explodes overhead, bloody crimson red, staining the night sky.

_This is your name._

As the haze of death clouds the edges of her vision, Shepard breathes in the electric tang of ozone, and thinks of the way Garrus kisses her; wild, and violent, and achingly tender as the fury-flicker of lightning, and constant as the steady promise of thunder.

 _Shepard_ closes her eyes

_Remember it._

* * *

 

Hannah is on the ground, fighting, when she watches the Crucible go up in an electric blaze of red-gold light.

Weeks later, when all they find of her daughter is a bloody, cracked open helmet, Hannah sits down, her face in her hands, and tries to remember how to breathe.

* * *

 

The news reports all call her daughter Shepard. Just Shepard, or _Commander_ Shepard. No first name is ever mentioned. According to the newscasters, Shepard never had a first name. She was always just Shepard.

 _No,_ Hannah thinks. _Not **just** Shepard._

She wonders if Shepard ever told her crew, the makeshift family she built around herself. Hannah wonders if her crew ever really knew that Shepard kept a prophecy to herself.

* * *

 

She finds out four years later, when a blue asari with eyes that blaze like supernovas knocks on her door.

“My name is Samara,” the asari says. “My name is Samara and I owe your daughter very much. Do you have time to speak?”

Hannah opens the door, and says nothing as the asari glides past her.

* * *

 

“My daughter,” Hannah says, and her voice catches in a strange way. “Did she ever tell you her name?”

Samara studies her for a long moment. “No. There was no need. She had no records of a first name, and only ever introduced herself as Commander Shepard.”

Hannah pours herself some tea, and then another cup for Samara.

Breathes out.

“Would you like to know?”

* * *

 

Samara drinks from her tea and ponders. “Shepard. A derivative of shepherd. To guide, to watch, to protect. That was who she was.”

Hannah chokes on a laugh. “Maybe. Well, yes. But her first name – her given first name – was a prophecy.”

Samara watches her steadily, and Hannah takes that as encouragement to keep speaking.

“Áinfean,” Hannah says, and this time, the name does not taste too misshapen in her mouth. The heavy _AWN_ rolls smoothly into the sinking _f’yun_. A promise, a lilt, a devastating afterecho.

“That name sounds like your old Gaeilge. I do not know enough to know the meaning.”

Hannah smiles. A weak, terrible thing. “Áinfean is very simple in its meaning. It means just three things.”

Samara goes still as Hannah tells her. Hannah has never seen an asari Matron look flabbergasted or particularly shocked, but the long silence that Samara holds tells her enough.

“Oh,” Samara says quietly, and there is an echo of pain in her words. “Oh. Of course that was her name.”

* * *

 

The days pass on Earth.

Quiet, sunny, and dry.

There is rain that passes through occasionally, but Hannah wonders if she’ll ever see lightning again.

* * *

 

It is just under five years that her daughter has been dead, when there is a knock at her door. A quiet, subdued, nearly hesitant knock.

This time, rather than a blue skinned asari, there is a turian. Slate grey, tall, blue colony markings tattooed across his face, marred only by the scars that carve down the panes of his cheeks and jawline.

He stares at her, searching her face for something he does not find, then clears his throat, looking away in a sharp, awkward motion.

“Are you… Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard?”

Hannah may not be too familiar with turian mannerisms, but the way his voice catches on her last name-

She _knows_.

“You knew my daughter, didn’t you?”

He nods, mandibles moving in motions she can’t understand, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. As alien as he may be, Hannah knows grief when she sees it.

“I have tea,” she says at last. “Would you like to come in?”

* * *

 

It takes nearly twenty minutes of awkward, stammered half starts for the turian to finally force his voice into words.

“I… Sorry. This, this seems bad of me. My name is Garrus Vakarian. I’m… an Advisor on Palaven, now, but I was… I was Shepard’s XO. Or, well. Something like it I guess.”

Hannah smiles in what she hopes seems reassuring. “I take it the two of you were close, then?”

Garrus flinches, mandibles pulling tight to the sides of his face. His shoulders slump in, and he seems to make himself smaller. He coughs awkwardly again, and shoots her a hesitant, sidelong look. “This… this is a bad way to _meet the parents_ , as you say in human culture, right?”

Hannah stares.

Garrus stares at his hands and very staunchly refuses to meet her eyes.

Hannah breathes out in a huff. “My daughter never was traditional about anything in the first place. I’m not sure why you being the one she loved should surprise me at all.”

Garrus jerks, head snapping up to meet her gaze.

Hannah smiles at him, almost gentle. “Now, if you were _batarian_ , then I might have some choice words for you, and some serious difficultly believing you in the first place, but you aren’t.” Hannah takes another drink of her tea, and watches as the turian before her struggles to process her words.

“You… don’t look like her. I’m not great with human faces. But… you have very few similarities.”

Hannah pauses. Carefully sets her teacup down. “Normally, I would say that is not my place to say anything. But… she is not here to argue, and you… well. It seems whatever I can say to ease your pain would help you. You deserve at least that much. I am not Shepard’s biological mother. I adopted her when she was sixteen.”

A long silence.

“Ah. She didn’t… she never talked about her family. Made a throwaway quip about not wanting children, once, but.” He hesitates again, catching her eye. “Ah, sorry. That’s not probably something a parent wants to hear about their child.”

Hannah laughs. “Oh, I have no doubts. I loved her, as best any parent could, and I think she loved me, too. But I was not her birth parents. I gave her a safe, stable home for two years, and then we both went to the Alliance. We kept correspondence, had dinner together when we could, and she sent these-“ Hannah holds up the teacup she’s using, “-whenever she found one that I might like. It’s the only reason I have such a nice collection. But, you can’t force someone to be family.”

Garrus huffs a laugh at that, gently cradling the teacup in his own talons. “No. No, I guess you can’t.” He’s quiet for a long moment, before hesitantly looking back up at her. “Why did you adopt her? What happened to her parents?”

Hannah breathes in. “Have you ever heard of Mindoir?”

Garrus goes still, still, still.

Hannah gives him a sad smile. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I was in my first year of service,” he says slowly, “and we all heard about it. We ran twice the drills the next three months in preparation for whatever might happen.”

“Quite understandable. There was a single survivor from that attack. Details about what actually happened weren’t… figured out. The survivor never spoke of it. But they found the survivor, barely alive, in a crater in the middle of the wheat fields. There was so much blood, it took them a week to realize the survivor naturally had red hair, and it wasn’t blood soaked.”

Garrus sucks an uneven breath in through his teeth. “No.”

Hannah nods. “It took her seven months to speak. The first thing she told me was the name she’d been given. Do you know what it means?”

* * *

 

Garrus leaves the next day after a restless night spent on the couch.

 _I don’t know how much you know about turian beliefs,_ he had said, awkward, and hesitant. _Our beliefs are usually family specific. In the Vakarian family, we believe that beings, groups, and places have spirits. For example, if a painter wanted to paint something beautiful, he’d go to a beautiful place in nature, and pray to the spirit there. Shepard…_ he trailed off, and he gave her a look that was almost haunted. _I wondered if the spirit of a storm hadn’t anchored itself to her, or if she wasn’t a spirit of a storm made human. Reality just… seemed to change around her. You humans don’t have a good of sense of smell as we do, but she always smelled the way the earth does right before the rain._

Hannah watches him go and wonders.

* * *

 

About a year after that, Hannah receives a message from an unknown sender.

 _Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard_ , the letter writes.

_I was a close friend of your daughter’s during her time as Commander of the Normandy. I was a part of her crew, and I owe her so very much. I am writing you this to give you a… as you humans say, a heads up. I have heard very worrying things about loved ones lost in the Reaper Wars appearing to family and friends in dreams. I thought you might like to be prepared in case your daughter appears to you._

_A friend._

Hannah ponders this.

_Friend of Shepard’s,_

_I am confused why you think she would come to me, rather than yourself, or Garrus._

_Hannah_

The response is almost immediate.

_She hasn’t appeared to any of us. You were her mother, and she may have left the most unsaid to you. Just a warning, heed it as you will._

* * *

 

“Her name was Áinfean,” Hannah says

Garrus’ mouth moves, tracing the shape of the words in a clumsy, stilted action.

When he tries to repeat it back, the gentle _AWN_ catches too loud and stiff, the lilting _f’yun_ pulled into a ragged _fee-UN_.

It sounds torn, ugly, and violent.

Hannah thinks of the red-gold glow of the Crucible in the skies over Earth, and quietly repeats her name so Garrus can say it right.

* * *

 

Days later, Hannah dreams she is seated at a table, empty white plains stretching on around her further than she can see.

Across the table, a turian watches her, her hide black as midnight with white colony tattoos tracking down her face, her eyes burning blue, blue, blue.

“Hannah Shepard,” the turian says, and her voice cracks like the static flicker of lightning, her subvocals rumbling a thunder accompaniment. “Hannah Shepard, do not worry. The Vakarian boy was not wrong about your daughter.”

“Who are you?” she asks, and the air around her crackles, electric.

The turian smiles, a wild, fierce thing. “Who, is not the correct question. _What_ will get you better answers.”

Hannah stares. Then, quietly, so quietly; “What are you?”

“Hannah Shepard, know this.”

Overhead the white space darkens, turning grey-black, the hot tang of ozone hot in the air, the rich waver of wet earth carrying on its tails.

“Hannah Shepard. A real god is a verb. A force that warps reality just through being. A force, a storm, an unending flurry of violence and fury that plants itself before the galaxy, before the greatest and oldest of threats the galaxy has ever known, and _wins_.”

Hannah cannot move, cannot blink, cannot even think to breathe, her heart beating uselessly in her throat.

“Hannah Shepard, I ask you this. When a storm dissipates, does it truly die? Or is it just biding its time, rebuilding its strength, so it may come again?”

Lightning hisses through the air around them, the undertones of the turians voice mirroring the looming, overwhelming ring of the thunder.

Hannah sucks in a breath, tastes the rain, the sweet petrichor in the air and-

* * *

 

She wakes to the crack of thunder outside, and the steady patter of rain against her windowpanes.

In moments she is on her feet, pressing her forehead to the glass, feeling the cool wash of rain, watching the fury-flicker of lightning overhead, feeling the thunder chorus through her bones.

She closes her eyes, feels the cool relief of the cold windowpane against her skin, and _wonders_.

* * *

 

“Áinfean,” Hannah says. “is an old Gaeilge name.”

Garrus stares, riveted.

“It means just three things.”

* * *

 

Joker stumbles out of the shuttle, ignoring the way the rear engines sputter.

A turian stands in the landing bay, his hide dark grey, white colony markings tattooed across most his visible face.

“Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau,” he says. “It’s good to have you aboard.”

“ _Where_ ,” he rasps, his voice cracking, furious and ugly. “ _I heard her voice. Where is she._ ”

“She is currently grumbling about not having her favorite shotgun back with her yet, and trying to decide on a suitable replacement.” Cool, amused, and heart-break familiar, EDI’s mobile platform walks out, reloading a pistol in an easy motion, before smiling over at Joker. “Hello, Jeff. It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”

Joker sits down on the ground.

Hard.

“I’m dead,” he says. “I’m dead. I got knocked out of the sky by the thresher maws. There’s no way. There’s _no fucking way_.”

“Please,” Victus says. “If there is an afterlife to be had, I hope it wouldn’t be with you. I’d much prefer the presence of the company I lost in the Reaper War, rather than some human pilot I’ve never met.”

“Fuck you, I’m great company to have in the afterlife,” Joker says, but it’s weak, fragile, half-hearted.

“Jeff,” EDI says, walking over to kneel beside him. This close, his expression is open and terrified. “Jeff, we are real. This is no afterlife. Shepard brought us back.”

“C’mon, Joker,” Shepard says, strolling into the room, casual as you please. “You really thought I’d let the Reapers keep me down and out? Besides, Garrus gave me orders and I never got the chance to yell at him for insubordination.” She finishes tying off her braid, and shoots him a grin. Her handgun and semi-automatic are strapped to her hips, her shotgun slung across her back, and her N7 armor gleams under the docking bay lights. “Might want to close your jaw before you eat flies, Joker. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Victus makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Given this is how you say _hi, I’m not dead_ to your crewmates, I no longer feel any regret about hassling you about your… appreciation for aliens.”

Shepard shoots Victus a _look_. “Fuck you.”

“I know you humans can’t tell turians apart, but you have the wrong turian.”

“ _Fuck you_.”

“Fuck,” Joker croaks.

EDI gives him an apologetic smile. “We have to get going, I’m sure the crew is in danger.”

Shepard shoots Joker another grin over her shoulder as she hops in the Kodiak, EDI at her side. “Don’t worry, Joker. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. In the meantime, there’s a pilot’s chair that’s got your name on it.”

As Shepard and EDI’s mobile platform take off, Joker is left, still speechless, staring in their wake.

“Jeff,” EDI says overhead, her voice warm, tender, and achingly kind. “Welcome home.”

* * *

 

“Look,” her father says. “Áinfean. It is the fury and violence of a thunderstorm, and the promise of life and renewal in its wake. It is the scythe that takes lives and reaps the harvest to provide. It is the new beginning in every ending, and it is the promise of change on the winds. Storm touched. Fury blessed. Violence given. This is your name.

Remember it.”

* * *

 

On Tuchanka’s horizon, a storm grows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was really hesitant to name shepard. i wont keep referring to her by the name i chose for her in this interlude - thats why i only included it in the interlude - bc i like to think my shepard fought to live up to her adoptive name, all while keeping the promise of her given name in the back of her mind. which is why i think when she sacrificed herself to save the galaxy she truly became a shepherd, truly became shepard.
> 
> did NOT expect this interlude to be so long. it was only abt 1k words in the first draft so idk what happened there! i think that shepard is shepard the whole game, but isn't not until after the catalyst, the crucible that she really becomes herself.
> 
> at least, imo. kind of the way garrus doesn't really become the garrus we know and love until after his stint on omega before mass effect 2. idk, some thoughts.


	10. archangel (part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i don't think now is the best time

Garrus opens his eyes.

Through the cloud of dust that cloys the air, he can make out the crumpled body of the Harvester, the putrid reek of decaying flesh oozing from its still open mouth.

He breathes, unsteady.

Close. Too close.

But-

His shots missed. The thing was going to kill him. The rest of the team is on the ground, unless-

Unless _-_

“Tali? Vega?” he calls. “Alenko? That you?”

“Not quite,” a familiar _, impossible_ voice says. “It seems you’ve gotten rather sloppy in the time I have been asleep, General Vakarian.”

Garrus goes still, still, still, the air freezing in his lungs.

EDI walks delicately over the fallen corpse of the harvester, calmly dusting gore and debris off the sleek blue-grey of her synthetic body. “Of course, without our help, I’m hardly surprised you all got yourselves into this mess.”

Jack, Wrex, Samara, the rest of the crew are shouting his name through the com, but he can hardly hear them over the surge of dizziness rising fast in his limbs, the hope beating a frantic tattoo against his ribs, tightening in a panicked noose around his heart.

“Our?” he rasps, and EDI smiles, smug and knowing, and-

And-

And like the incoming tide, like the slow build of a radiation storm, like, like-

Like the first breath of cool air before a summer thunderstorm, the air goes quiet, static building beneath his skin, lighting up his arms as the world hums with electric energy.

“C’mon, Vakarian,” he hears, and his heart twists, desperate with hope, weak with relief in his chest. “You didn’t _really_ think I would stay down and out, did you?”

And like the first crack of thunder over open plains, like the wash of rain from the heavens, Shepard launches past him, lit up by the fury-fast flicker of biotics. He hears her laugh, husky and low, like rain against wheat shells, and all he can do is stand with his blood roaring in his ears as she collides with a thresher maw in a shattering blast of dark matter.

In moments, one of the thresher maws crumbles to the ground in a crackling flare of biotics, and there is a stunned silence that echoes across the ravaged plains of Tuchanka.

Seven left.

The com hisses in his ear.

“Patching you in,” EDI murmurs.

And then-

_Then-_

“I really hope you all aren’t going to stand and do nothing. I’m always the one that has to get all the work done around here, aren’t I?” Shepard’s voice rasps over the com; rusted, but warm with humor.

The silence remains, Garrus’ jaw working, his tongue sticking heavy against the roof of his mouth. He can hardly think to speak, let alone _hope_ that maybe, just fucking maybe-

On the ground, the rest of the squad have frozen, staring dumbly at the lightning glow of Shepard’s biotics.

Garrus’ steady sniper hands shake and shake and shake.

Shepard laughs, bright, almost joyous as she skates down the writhing back of a thresher maw, ripping it apart behind her. Gore rains down in her wake like bloody fireworks, and she takes a split second to reorient herself, before charging right back into another.

Six left.

He breathes out, forcing the frantic tremble of his hands into something calm, familiar, and he breathes out, nailing shot after shot on the thresher before her.

“C’mon, gang,” Shepard drawls. “I’ll tell you all about how I got kicked out of the afterlife once we take care of the trouble that Wrex has got himself into again.”

Another thresher falls, wrecked by her biotics, bleeding freely from his bullets.

Five left.

And Shepard pauses on the ground. “Oh, and, Garrus?” she asks, and through his scope he can see her, looking his direction, her eyes the waves of the ocean on cloudy days, her smile quicksilver and tugged up on one side, and he _aches_ with how familiar the sight of her is. “Remember this-“

Biotics swirl to life, wild, tempestuous, up Shepard’s spine, and Garrus can taste the burn of dark matter, the ozone sear of electricity in the air. She launches herself into the air, shotguns out, charging right into the gaping maw of a thresher. Its teeth bow out, rings upon rings of serrated edges folding open for her. Shepard’s braid ripples, a bloody banner trailing out behind her, as she unloads round after round of burning ammo into the heart of its jaws.

As it squeals and goes up in flames behind her, she shoots him a cocky, quickfire grin and a smug wink. “I took the killshot.”

Four left.

“ _You bastard_ ,” Jack shrieks over the com, launching another shockwave at a thresher. “ _It’s been **six years**_.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Shepard says, ducking under cover as a thresher spits acid at her. “I was too busy being dead and fighting with the spirits of everyone and their mom.”

“Shepard-“ Liara starts, only to be cut off as she dives back to cover. “If that really is you-“

“Please. I’d like to see anyone else actually get kicked out of the afterlife.”

“You seem awful proud of this,” Samara says, hope frail, fragile in her voice.

“Oh, you know,” Shepard says, breathless as she lunges out of cover to launch a shockwave at one of the threshers. “I’d like to think that it’s one of my better accomplishments.” She grunts as she dodges a spray of acid, throwing herself back down to cover next to Liara. “I’d put it right up there with throwing a krogan or two into the side of the gym on my ship. You know those dents are still there?”

“Battlemaster-“

“Okeer says hi, by the way,” Shepard says. “He told me to knock the _trobror_ off my turian’s face.”

Wrex snorts, Grunt makes a vaguely amused noise, and Garrus lets out a breath that’s too choked up to be laughter.

“Spirits,” he says, his voice finally crackling to life, broken and disbelieving. “Only you, Shepard. Only fucking you.”

Shepard looks over to his perch and grins at him through his sightlines. “I’m halfway surprised any of you actually thought I would do you all the favor of staying dead this time around.”

“I should have known you would be too bloodthirsty to be held. You’re more krogan than you are human,” Wrex says, and there’s wary, wry humor in his voice.

Shepard grunts as she scrambles back to cover after nailing several shots in a thresher’s throat. “I’ll tell you all about it. It wasn’t nearly all it was cracked up to be.”

“Shepard,” EDI says over the coms. “We can explain once the threshers are taken care of.”

Jack spits a startled string of swears. “Fuck you, Shepard. I thought you were a fake, since I _know_ you can’t fly.”

EDI preens. “Shepard would still be stuck on Earth were it not for me. The one time she did drive, she crashed the rapid transit.”

“Hey-“

“Actually, you were responsible for ruining _two_ transit shuttles on the Citadel-“

“The second one was _not_ my fault, I’m not that bad at driving-“

“I reviewed your records and the service logs to your Mako as well, Shepard.”

Garrus barks a sharp laugh. “Every damn time, Shepard, every damn time!”

“Fuck you, Vakarian.”

“You can fuck him later,” Jack grumbles. “Preferably, when none of us are around to hear you going _Garrus, oh Garrus_ \- **_Watch it, Shepard you nearly took my arm off with that thing!_** ”

“Oh, did I miss?” Shepard asks. “Pity.”

“Death take away your aim, too, Shepard?” Garrus teases.

“I’m sure your aim will more than make up for it,” she teases right back, her voice dropping low, raspy, and so, so suggestive.

“ _Gross_ , Shepard!” Jack yells, and Shepard laughs, loud and free, and charges right back into the fray.

* * *

 

“Shepard, you have got to stop showing back up right when I’m in the middle of a firefight.” Garrus snipes several klixen closing in on her position as the rapid fire of EDI’s pistol rings in his ear, gunning down the varren that have tried to take them by surprise.

“C’mon, Garrus,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Where’s your sense of fun?”

“I’ll show you fun,” he grumbles, and Shepard just laughs.

Garrus breathes out and aims again, feeling lighter than he has in years.

Another thresher crumbles under the unified force of Jack, Shepard, Liara, and Samara’s biotic powers.

Three left.

“Better hurry up, Wrex, I’m gonna embarrass you in front of everyone again!” Shepard shouts, throwing dark energy snarling into another thresher, and ducking back down to cover.

Wrex laughs, low and rumbling. “You are welcome to try, Shepard, but I’m sure you don’t have the quad for it.”

Shepard spits out a string of words that don’t translate.

“Shepard,” EDI says, tart and disapproving. “Remarking upon the mannerisms of the reproductive organs of other species and wishing that upon Wrex is considered quite rude.”

Shepard just grins, and charges back into the fray with a wild whoop.

* * *

 

Another thresher falls, as more harvesters, klixen, and varren close in on them.

Two left.

“Fucking hell, Wrex!” Jack barks. “What did you _do?!_ ”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” Wrex snaps. “It’s the damn Reaper’s fault. They freaked out Kalros, so she spawned as many as she could. They’ve only just now reached maturity.”

“Goddess,” Liara breathes out, jumping back as a harvester lunges for her, and Jack spinning just in time to launch a shockwave at it.

* * *

 

Around them, the varren and klixen close in, shrieking.

Behind Garrus, there’s a growl, and the sudden rank, wet breath of rotting meat.

“ _Garrus_ ,” Shepard shouts, and in a rush of biotics, she’s at his back, launching a shockwave at the varren snarling down on him, and he’s whipping around, sightlines fixing on the harvester on her tail.

In the space between breaths, they fall into place, like a key sliding home in a lock, like two halves of a well-oiled machine, Shepard diving low and fast, Garrus sniping, killing anything that follows in her path.

Shepard and Vakarian; just like old times.

The klixen, varren, and remaining harvesters are overwhelming, and in the duck and dodge of the acid spray of the threshers, Garrus’ vision dwindles to scope, fire, reload, scope, fire, reload, firing just behind the glimmering, lightning flicker of Shepard’s biotics trail. He blows the head off a klixen, watches as a varren slumps dead to the ground, spins, rifle at the ready, just in time to see Shepard stop her charge inches from the barrel of his rifle, her biotics lit up her spine, grime and blood splattered across her face, her eyes glowing blue blue _blue_ , and-

Garrus drops his rifle and reaches for her and-

Shepard reaches back, and-

And-

With the thresher maws raging around them, the explosions of biotics and guns and grenades showering debris like waves across the battlefield, she pulls him down, kissing him with all the power and fury and wild abandon of a thunderstorm. He can taste the ozone static crackle as he licks into her mouth, taste the sweet salt-sweat of summer heat on her lips, feel the rumbling tremor of thunder in her body, and the hot lightning of relief buzzing beneath his skin.

She rests her forehead against his, her breathing uneven, her eyes wet, and her smile watery. “Sorry to break it to you, but you just might be stuck with me, Garrus,” she murmurs.

Garrus makes a noise that’s too breathless, too broken to be a laugh. “I think I can live with that.” Pauses. “Definitely. I can definitely live with that.”

Shepard’s lips tug up, lightning-fast and quicksilver to one side. “Let’s take care of the rest of them. Just like old times, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s a C-Sec Officer, he’s Archangel, he’s the Reaper Advisor on Menae, he’s Advisor Vakarian, trying his best to force the broken edges of himself into the shape of a good turian, and Shepard asks him to follow her.

He’s twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-five years old, war-beaten, victory-forged, and Shepard-

She asks him _anything_ and he always, _always_ says-

“Yeah, you got it, Shepard,” he whispers.

Shepard smiles. Really, and truly. There’s a trace of the sad, melancholy ache he knows in the lines of her cheeks, but there is also something wild and _free_ in her eyes.

She leans in, brushes a kiss against the fading scars of his cheek, and in a flash, she’s throwing herself back into the fray.

Garrus breathes out.

Shoulders his rifle.

And just like Shepard settles back in his heart, he settles in as the watchful eye at her back.

Shepard. And Vakarian.

Be it a fever dream, the afterlife, or just the heat-sticky haze of battle clouding his mind; for however long Shepard is with him, Garrus will take it.

In whatever capacity Shepard is there, he’ll fucking _take it_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the wait! thank you everyone for your reviews they mean the world to me and they are always the highlight of my day! had to split this chapter up because i wanted to get something up for you all to enjoy while i hammer out the second part of this. thank you for your patience and sticking with this story!


	11. archangel, part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> death, undeath, and promises of piracy.
> 
> or: shepard and garrus talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> christ i am so sorry about the long fuckin wait on getting this one up for yall. i finally had time to sit down and just write for a few hours, after dealing with a lack of motivation and a loss of what to do with this chapter. i think this should flow well enough, but there's a good chance i will come back to this and reupload this chapter with twice the pining and sadness. but, for now! this will do! two chapters left,,, phew. An interlude, and then the epilogue. I hope yall enjoy what I have set up, and I hope I'll be able to get those chapters out on a slightly more regular schedule than when this came out!
> 
> thanks for sticking with me, and i hope you all enjoy this!

In the long struggle of bringing down the remaining thresher maws, Shepard’s voice goes quiet, and the static crackle of her biotics blends into the powerful combined surge of Liara’s and Jack’s biotics, the bloody stain of her red hair fading into the dust haze of Tuchanka’s desolate plains.

Liara tears down another thresher, and Shepard makes no comment over the coms.

One left.

Wrex lets out a yell and charges, as Samara throws her biotics at the last writhing beast, Garrus nailing shot after shot behind them.

The ring of EDI’s pistol fades and does not come back.

* * *

 

The last thresher maw crashes to the ground in a crash of dust and debris, and the empty expanse of Tuchanka suddenly seem too open, too quiet. Garrus pushes himself to his feet, looking around the battlefield, uneasy.

Shepard is nowhere to be found.

This time, it had felt so real.

He had even felt the electric burr of lightning humming through his veins, tasted the salt sweat of her skin, smelled the rain-damp earth that carried in the air after her but-

Tuchanka is hushed, and still, and grey, grey, grey.

Garrus closes his eyes, and tries to just breathe.

* * *

 

On the ground, Jack looks up towards Garrus, her brows knitting together. Samara casts a glance out over the horizon, and Liara’s shoulders slump, just so.

The coms are silent for a long moment.

“The threshers are done for,” Liara says at last.

Grunt makes a noise of assent, his gaze focused along the line of corpses. “It went easier than I had expected. There was a moment when I was certain we were all done for.”

“As did I,” Samara murmurs, her voice distant, uncertain.

“I thought-“ Garrus says, his voice cracking loud over to coms, his throat clogging, closing up on him.

Wrex looks up at him. “I think we all thought so. Must’ve been that weird Void-echo Liara was telling us about.”

Silence falls.

“It… does make sense that Shepard’s echo would be stronger, more visible than the others. And we were all her special people, so of course she would appear to us all before vanishing,” Liara says.

Garrus curls his talons into fists and looks away. “I know what I felt. She- It felt real.”

“I am afraid that all the reports I received indicated that it always felt real to the people the spirits appeared to,” Liara says, and it _hurts_ how genuine her comfort, her pity sounds. Because-

Because Liara loved her too, once. Really, they all did.

Garrus closes his eyes, his fingers curling into tight, grief-stricken fists.

Perhaps that’s just how it is, to love a force of nature, to love a sacrifice, to love a _god_ -

Because as much as he loves Shepard, as much as he’s carved every bit of his existence into the shape of  place she can be _safe_ , a place she can be _real_ -

Keeping Shepard is like trying to cage a storm in a bottle; every time he thinks he’s come close, he can feel her dissipate through his hands, smell the petrichor lingering in her wake, and only feel the rain of her tears on his skin.

Shepard was never meant to be kept. _Gods_ were never meant to be kept.

Garrus breathes out, a ragged, broken breath. Tonight, he will pray to the spirits again, asking forgiveness for how desperately he clings to Shepard’s spirit, asking for pity, for mercy, just for the chance to really say goodbye, just once.

“Shepard was never ours to keep,” Samara says softly. “One like her could never be held here. It’s a miracle her spirit could help us in the way it did.”

Grunt makes a soft noise of assent, and Garrus-

Garrus just tries to fucking breathe.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shepard says abruptly, her voice echoing through the coms. “Could be I just got stuck beneath a thresher and you all were too busy being sad to-“ she grunts, her breath catching in a strained gasp, before there’s a crash and a crackle-flicker of dark matter, as bits and pieces of a thresher launch into the air before their eyes. “-to bother to help your old Commander out. I knew you all outgrew me and all, it’s been a while, but jeez that’s cold.”

“Shepard,” Garrus whispers, reverent and terrified.

There’s a pause, and then Shepard crawls out of the hole left by the broken carcass of the thresher maw, staggering to her feet, bracing herself on her shotgun. Behind her, EDI brushes dust from her synthetic body, an expression of vague irritation crossing her delicate features. Shepard catches their awe-struck gazes, and cracks a grin.

Blood-stained, streaked in grime, her smile the crooked knife-flit of lightning at dusk, Garrus wonders if he’s ever seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“Goddess,” Liara chokes out behind him.

Shepard stumbles, staggering to the side, and before he can even think, before he can even _breathe_ , Garrus is at her side, catching her – solid, heavy, sturdy, and _alive_ – before she can hit the ground.

She makes a weak little gasp, startlingly out of character, before she hisses out a curse. “ _Jesus_ , I should have gotten in touch with Miranda first. Maybe wasn’t the best idea to steal a ship, save an Advisor, then fight half a dozen thresher maws and rescue my crew on a barely working body.”

Garrus makes a noise and Shepard huffs a laugh as she sags into him.

“Christ, I didn’t think I would make it in time. Glad I got here before you got your ass kicked again, Vakarian,” she says, like she’s never been gone, like it’s before the Reapers, like it’s just another day in the life and Garrus-

Garrus makes a sound too broken, too battered to be a laugh, and drops his forehead down against her shoulder, breathing in the sea-salt, radiation-dust tang of her skin, the whispering afterecho of petrichor lingering around her.

“Next time you die,” he says, and his voice cracks. “Next time you die, I’m throwing myself straight into the line of fire. Seems like that’s usually what gets you to come back.”

Shepard laughs. “The overwhelming need to pull your collective asses out of the fire is strong enough to beat back even death – ah, ouch, easy with my shoulder there.”

“Shepard,” Liara cries, dropping to her knees beside them, flinging her arms around her Commander. In moments, the rest of the crew surrounds them, reaching down, reaching out with trembling arms, helping hoist the spectre of their commander to her feet.

“Hey guys,” she says, grinning. “Heard you needed a hand getting out of the mess you all got yourselves into again.”

“If we did not get into trouble, there would be no need for you to save us from it,” Samara remarks, and Shepard laughs, wheezy and exhausted, but _real_.

“I brought backup if I wasn’t enough, don’t worry. And I got a ship.”

“You goin’ pirate on me behind my back, Shepard?” Jack jibes.

“Can’t exactly go pirate without a crew. Figure I got a few openings if you’re looking to join, though.”

“I’m sure the turian would be more than happy to fill those openings for you, Shepard.”

Garrus chokes on his own spit as Shepard cackles with laughter, before breaking off in a sharp, hissing, pained breath.

“No jokes until I can laugh without dislocating my ribs further,” Shepard huffs, unable to stop smiling. “EDI!” she calls over her shoulder. “Call Chakwas, see if you can’t get her on the ship.”

“Shepard, I’m almost offended you think I’m incompetent. I’ll have you know Jeff and I already contacted Karen Chakwas, and her shuttle is already in route.”

Shepard grins, relieved. “Good, it’s starting to hurt to breathe, Christ on a cracker. Oh well, ship should still be in orbit, and we have a shuttle or two to spare to ferry everyone up. Thank fuck we got on board before they could decommission those, too.”

Garrus pulls up short. “Shepard,” he asks. “You wouldn’t happen to have been on the Citadel recently, have you?”

Shepard just smiles.

* * *

 

The first thing Advisor Garrus Vakarian says when he steps foot on the Normandy for the first time in five years is;

“You bastard. You really didn’t want to do my fucking paperwork, did you.”

Victus laughs in his face.

* * *

 

Hours of partying and drinking and riotous cheering later, and the Normandy is quiet.

Tali never showed, having been called back to deal with the geth coming back online. Alenko was summoned for Spectre work, something about a missing ship, and he had requisitioned Vega into coming with him.

None of them were answering their coms or their messages, regardless of how many garbled, drunken emails Wrex had sent off.

Shepard just laughed it off over her mug of coco, saying something or another about talking to them later, since she’s responsible for the chaos again.

Garrus didn’t know. He was healthily buzzed and drunk-delirious on the sound of Shepard’s voice.

Nothing else really mattered.

But that was hours ago.

Here, now, the ship is dark. Around him, the crew is passed out, drinks empty and spilled, and Shepard had long gone off to bed, or to her cabin, or the cockpit, or-

He didn’t know. He was a bit too drunk when she left to remember where she said she was going.

Head clear now, save for the quiet whisper of a headache that will certainly be there come morning, Garrus rises, slipping from the room, in search of his Commander, in search of his… Shepard.

* * *

 

He finds her in the only place she really could be:

Sitting, legs folded, in the port side observatory, staring quietly out over the vast expanse of stars and space and emptiness before her.

She doesn’t move to acknowledge him when he enters, so he sinks down to sit beside her, and for a long, long while, silence reigns.

“Are you gonna ask?” Shepard says at last.

“Yeah, alright,” he replies. “How much time did you spend on the shuttle thinking up a dramatic line to hit us with when you showed back up?”

Shepard snorts. “Would you believe me if I said it really was a spur of the moment thing?”

“Hell no. Don’t forget, I listened to you practice all your speeches under your breath in the shuttles, _and_ watched all those shitty old earth alien movies with you that you love so much.”

“ _We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore_ ,” Shepard quotes, a private smile curling her lips. _“We will be united in our common interests. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win this day-_ “

“ _-it will not be known just as a victory, but as the day the galaxy declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We’re going to live on, to survive!_ ”

Shepard stares, and he looks away, one mandible flicking uneasily.

“I…  I had a lot of time on my hands. I watched your old movies. Watched your holospeeches. I don’t _do_ loss well, Shepard. You know that.”

Shepard looks down at her hands.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I know. I-“

She bites her lip, and for a long moment, Garrus wonders if she won’t say anything further.

“I was caught in this place in between. It’s spotty, what I remember. I remember fighting. A lot of fighting.” Shepard hesitates again. “You were there. So was your mother. The only other people there were dead ones. It, it promised me that if I didn’t go back, you would be dead, but I- I couldn’t leave EDI and the geth. I couldn’t go back with them, Garrus, I- I, I couldn’t just- I couldn’t do that, and I know you must hate me for choosing them over you, but it wasn’t even a choice I thought to make, and I-“

Garrus leans over, gently catching her jaw and tilting her head so he can kiss her deep, and slow, and soft.

“Shepard. You shouldn’t apologize. You wouldn’t be the Shepard I know and love if you had compromised on anything.” He flicks a tired, fond smile at her. “I knew what I was signing up for. Sure the, the saving the world a few times, and the half-blown-up face, and your goddamn driving weren’t-“

“Hey-“

“-exactly what I expected, but that doesn’t mean I regret any of it.” He pulls away, settling his weight on hands, leaning back to stare at the stars before them. “I’ve always been exactly where I want to be with you, Shepard. You showed me there was more to the galaxy, to _life_ than just C-Sec, than just begrudgingly doing what my father wanted for me. You made me want to do _more_ with myself, Shepard. That whole stint on Omega… that was me trying to do right by your memory. I messed things up a little more this time around, but I got there. Advisor to the Primarch on Palaven. I’m a bit high on the chain of command these days, but I wanted to be in a place to help better the world you died for.”

“Garrus-“

“What I’m saying is-“ Garrus pauses to sigh heavily, mandibles moving in stilted, cut off motions. “Shepard. What I’m saying is I loved you for you. You never compromised on doing the right thing, even when the costs got high. And when the costs got too high, you forged a new path to make an option no one realized existed. You did the impossible again, and again, and again, even when the calls got harder and harder, and you killed yourself for doing the right thing twice now. What I’m saying- What I’m saying is, I’m not mad. I couldn’t be, because that’s really the only thing the Shepard I know could do. I wouldn’t expect any less from her.”

Shepard breathes out an uneven, shaking breath. She shifts to better face him and reaches out a hand, slowly pulling him down to press their foreheads together.

“The whole time I was fighting,” she whispers softly, “I never stopped thinking about you.”

“I could never forget you.” His voice breaks, fracturing at the edges, the ragged undertones betraying him. “You were everything. Are everything.”

Shepard laughs. It’s watery, and weak, but _real_. “How do you feel about the beach?”

“Never been,” he says, managing to grin back at her.

Shepard’s smile is conspiratorial and overwhelmingly infectious. “Well, this ship is already good and pirated, might as well go to the beach and seal the deal. They’ve got these shitty beach bars with cheap ass drinks, and most places have dextro and levo these days, from what I’ve heard.”

Garrus cradles her face in one hand, savoring the lingering smell of rain that hangs in the air around her, the lightning crackle of biotics that lights under his skin when he touches her. “Wherever you go,” he tells her, he _promises_ her. “Wherever you go, Shepard, I’ll always have your back. Always.”

“The galaxy better watch out,” she says softly, tenderly, pressing a feather-light kiss to his mouth. “Shepard and Vakarian are back together again.”

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from richard siken's crush.
> 
> this used to be a story of mine i had titled earth that i took down after the first chapter. i was dissatisfied with the way it was shaping up, and felt like it needed a fairly major rework, so here it is, take two, in a way that feels much better and im much more satisfied with.


End file.
